


wasting your honor

by pissedofsandwich



Series: second leading man / supporting role [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence, M/M, Miscommunication, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining when You Are Already Together, Post-Canon, Tokyo 2021 Summer Olympics, Unreliable Narrator, i swear despite everything this fic is about marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26209822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pissedofsandwich/pseuds/pissedofsandwich
Summary: It's just a theory, but Hinata is willing to attest that asking Atsumu to marry him wouldn't be so hard if he would just accept that Hinata loves him too.In which Hinata is the man with the plans, and it takes Atsumu a while before he realizes that he’s always undeniably been a part of them.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji & Miya Atsumu, Hinata Natsu & Miya Atsumu, Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu
Series: second leading man / supporting role [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854484
Comments: 63
Kudos: 410





	1. Atsumu

**Author's Note:**

> dedications:  
> -to [dea](https://twitter.com/beykugousquad), who sparked the entirety of this fic by asking, ‘so, what exactly does hinata see in atsumu?’ and led me into a deep atsuhina spiral.  
> -to vins for patiently reading through the mess of the first draft and pointed me in the right direction. [please support her!](https://twitter.com/mortalatte/status/1299055655169462272)  
> -thank you for taylor swift, who released folklore solely for fic writers to pick titles from.  
> -to ao3 user [elenoir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenoir) for letting me be weird in her dms.  
> -lastly, to ao3 guest user tokwha, i’m thinking of you always <3
> 
> this is a sequel to [have my sympathy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24909823/chapters/60278257), set 3 years after the events. you would probably need to read it for context. otherwise, an abridged version: atsumu pines for hinata while trying to get akaashi and bokuto together. there's flirting, a karaoke scene, a monopoly/balcony scene, a love confession, and accidentally walking into each other's make-out sessions. 
> 
> otherwise, please enjoy.

_I would split open my heart  
_ _with a knife, place you  
_ _within and seal my wound,_  
_so that you might dwell there  
_ _and never inhabit another_

— Abu Muhammad Ibn Hazm

_*_

There were very few reasons why Akaashi would show up at his door, at nine am no less, on a sunny day in Tokyo:

  1. Someone (Bokuto or Hinata were highly suspect, though Osamu was another candidate, except he was off on the other side of the world, so highly unlikely) had put Akaashi up to this;
  2. He’d somehow been bestowed with the magical girl curse to body-swap with his love interest, in which case the person standing in front of him was actually Bokuto (highly probable);
  3. He was in some mortal danger which only Atsumu could save him from (again, very unlikely), or;
  4. He was finally here to take him out. The assassin kind (highest probability of all four). Possibly a retribution for looking at Bokuto’s dick, despite the fact that Bokuto himself was clearly over it and so was he.



(Okay, sure, sometimes he looked at Bokuto, the bundle of energy that he was, and wondered how he managed to be so _humble_ with so… _much_ hidden inside his pants, but that was only because Atsumu knew he, for a change, would be _insufferable_ if he was as well-endowed. This went on the list of reasons why Bokuto was probably too good for this world, and, okay, so maybe he could kind of _see_ why Akaashi would not like him.)

"Atsumu-san," Akaashi said placidly, his face void of any expression as always, a messenger bag slung over his shoulders. The faint smudge at the edge of his glasses was the only indication that he was at all human; the rest of him screamed unattainable, cold to the touch. 

That being said, he realized Akaashi probably hadn't (especially if he knew that sometimes, when Atsumu saw him at the Jackals' matches, wearing an inconspicuous number four jersey, he wondered about how someone of his size could—okay, _stop,_ inappropriate train of thoughts, fuck Shouyou for being away at the Olympic village and leaving him alone and horny in this impersonal, half-furnished apartment), so perhaps Akaashi was right to take him out.

"No one but me is allowed to see Bokuto-san's dick," Atsumu imagined him saying, except now that they were both Akaashis, perhaps he would call his husband by _Koutarou._ "You must now die for your sins." 

He checked around for any blunt weapon on Akaashi's person. He only held a coffee cup in his hand, but for someone who spent two years editing a successful—however short-lived—thriller manga for a living, he could probably incapacitate Atsumu with the paper sleeve in three quick moves. There was no better time than now; with his leg in a cast, all Akaashi had to do was nudge him in the right direction, enough to make it seem like a sad accident.

"Keiji!" he greeted anyway with a plastic, store-bought joy. "What a surprise!"

Akaashi blinked, displaying the complete opposite of every emotion Atsumu tried to convey, and adjusted his glasses up his nose. "Hello, Atsumu-san."

"What brings ya here?" Atsumu asked, trying, but failing, to lean casually against the doorframe. If he acted as casual perhaps Akaashi would feel benevolent enough to make it quick.

But Akaashi just sighed. "Can I come in?" 

That was odd, Atsumu thought. Of all people, he would've thought a writer like Akaashi would know about crafting good alibis. Once he stepped inside his apartment, anywhere Atsumu's corpse would be found, he'd be the first suspect. It was only for this reason that he hesitated—if one was kind of already wishing to cease existing since, like, five days ago, wouldn't his to-be murderer be his savior? What were the ethics of making sure your murderer got away with the crime?

Akaashi sighed once again. With the amount of times he did that in Atsumu's presence, it was a miracle he had any oxygen left in his lungs. "This is not a trick," he grunted—grunted! Something wrong was terribly afoot!—with the air of someone who wished to put a hole in Atsumu's brain. Same sentiments, if Atsumu was being honest. He said the next words like he was reading off a teleprompter, terribly eloquent and rehearsed. "My house gets very lonely without Koutarou."

Atsumu looked behind him in alarm, suddenly very aware of another possibility:

  1. He could be put on a prank show. (Ever since the volleyball association guy with the scammer aura became enlightened on the monetary value of releasing personable vlog content, he’d been pushing the entire team to pursue a YouTube career as a side gig. Except Atsumu was technically not part of the national team anymore, now, was he?)



Probably the worst way to blow his cover, Akaashi added, with a _smile_ (Atsumu never went to college but he was not _dense,_ honestly, this whole thing felt like a set-up—which, might as well), "I'd just like some company, is all."

Three years of knowing Bokuto meant that he got to know Akaashi as the oftentimes cryptic—and downright weird—person that he really was, the way he delivered his idle, fleeting thoughts in a dry, stoically matter-of-fact manner strangely reminiscent to that of his old captain Kita, so the sight of his smile did nothing but creep out Atsumu. 

"Instead you came here?" Atsumu gaped. Then his eyes narrowed, because he was Miya Atsumu, and as a serial bullshitter, he could smell bullshit from a mile away. "Okay. Who put you up to this?"

Akaashi faltered. Gotcha. "Is it really hard to believe that I'd want to," a visible gulp, "hang out with you?"

"Yes," Atsumu retorted. He didn't know what kind of face he was making—besides, it wasn't like he'd look particularly intimidating barely standing like this—but Akaashi flinched, the slightest crack on his porcelain-smooth face. 

"...Koutarou asked me."

Atsumu attempted to level him with a stare. It wasn't the full story, and he knew it.

"Fine," Akaashi sighed. "Koutarou asked me, but only because Hinata asked him first."

 _There it is._ He'd really, really rather have Akaashi here to take him out. Anything but this humiliating pity party his ill-advised boyfriend was throwing for him. Atsumu cursed.

"I already told him, I don't need to be babysat—"

"He doesn't think that," Akaashi cut in.

"What the hell is this then, sending you all the way here?" Atsumu raked a hand through his hair. "Sorry, Keiji, to bother you like this, you must be so busy and Shouyou just—"

"I wouldn't have come if it's a bother," Akaashi said, nudging his glasses up his nose bridge. "But it _is_ rather inconvenient that you still haven't let me in."

Atsumu crossed his arms. "That's a lie. You don't wanna be here."

Akaashi stared at him. Two seconds, three, four. He buried his face in his hands and screamed as quietly as he could. When his hands came away, he looked, yet again, painfully neutral. Atsumu knew it didn't mirror how he felt.

"Milk's spilt, Atsumu-san. I'm already here," he said. "I can always relay to Hinata that his dear boyfriend is too chock-full of idiot ego to accept help from one of his closest friends since high school, or you can admit you need company and let me in so we can take some obligatory selfies to appease our respective partners."

"I don't _need_ company—"

"Fine. Maybe you don't. I couldn't care less," Akaashi said, voice rising in a way that told Atsumu he was getting irritated, "But Hinata's worried, and that makes Bokuto worried, which leads to their focus being split when the only thing they need to focus on right now is to win at the Olympics—so if chaining myself to your presence helps them somewhat, I'm doing it." 

Full stop. No room for arguments. 

Atsumu pinched the space between his eyebrows. He hated how much sense Akaashi was making now, hated the fact that his own circumstances affected another person, hated how helpless he was to change it at all. Hated that Hinata refused not to care about him, hated how, despite the many times he told Hinata otherwise, there was a traitorous part of himself that went warm at the thought of being thought of.

But that was only a small part of it; the bigger feeling was shame, gnawing its sharp teeth at him, at having a mere acquaintance who he knew disliked him seeing him like this, at the thought that Hinata talked to other people in reference to his stupid, unfortunate situation, at the fact that Miya Atsumu, who talked big about himself, had managed to hit himself in the face and end up in rock bottom: with one broken leg, out of the Olympic roster that, to him and everyone else, served as the world stage. The end goal, falling down and away.

He stepped aside.

"Please," he said through gritted teeth. "Do come in."

*

A look back:

Atsumu was the twenty-six year old setter of MSBY Black Jackals. 

At barely eighteen years old, he made the decision to skip university entirely to play for AEON Jaguars, one of the many professional clubs that recruited him. He was traded to the Black Jackals on the eve of his twentieth birthday, and the day he donned the black and bronze uniform, he snapped a picture for his old Inarizaki group chat and wrote, _still don't need memories._

Just two months later, he would fall just shortly on making it to the national team. Four rookies on the team, the whispers said, were bad luck, and they already put Ushijima, Bokuto, and Kageyama on the roster, big damn risk takers. 

Besides, the rejection seemed to say, you were second place. To stand on the world summit, you must be nothing but the first. The greatest or no one at all.

The sick satisfaction at seeing Ushijima stutter and stumble was the first time he felt petty, so uncharacteristic of him that it left him burning, aching. The envy at seeing five service aces fly just outside the fingertips of the French libero was white-hot, smoke filling up his lungs. At nineteen years old, Kageyama was the national hero who saved Japan's fifth set, and ensured the nation's climb up to a steady second place, the first medal after 2012’s bronze, and Atsumu watched the silver glint from its place on Kageyama's chest, bit between his white, pearly teeth. His face, when Atsumu woke the next day, starving, was staring at him from every printed and online media. 

At twenty years old, Atsumu gripped the hunger for _next time_ by its throat and began perfecting a hybrid serve that he would come to be known for, a short two and a half years later. His team would consist of four of the circuit of new players baptized as the monster generation, including himself, and he'd toss to the reincarnation of the sun god himself—in place of the flying chariot, his own feet, catapulting him off the mundane ground, just a touch out of reach. His strikes were the diseased arrows shot through the heart of their opponents, guiding the ball with an almost reverent quality to pinpoint the Achilles' heel that would win them the war. With this sun of a man, Atsumu would bring the Black Jackals to two consecutive victories in the league, breaking records and putting his name, for the first time, on the first row of a list—the MVP. Together, they would make it to the national team, Hinata the number ten and him eleven, one after the other. Spiker and setter.

And then, just two weeks before it was all about to pay off, he took three steps instead of two, and in a blinding moment of searing pain, the top of the world slipped out of his grip.

At twenty-six years old, he helped his manager draft a statement of his departure from the national team, citing injuries.

*

The morning shows called it a once-in-a-lifetime. A cosmological coincidence. What was the likelihood that the baby boom in the mid-90s would give rise to a jump in volleyball's popularity in a decade, sustained for generations to come? What was the likelihood that the current roster of the national team would be made up of the same men who played against and with each other in high school, now grown up and well-established athletes? Zero, had the universe not aligned perfectly to make it all happen so neatly. 

The show host bragged that this was proof of the gods’ love for Japan; when creating the monster generation, he joked, instead of dividing the ingredient that would make great volleyball athletes equally between the nations, he'd dumped the container's entirety onto the fertile soil of their country. The world, the host hypothesized, would not stand a chance against this new team representing Japan.

Atsumu, who was used to making chances for himself, did not agree with this. The national volleyball association had always sought out new seeds from high school; teach 'em young, they always said, and by the time they were adults, you'd have made a monster all on your own. It was simply the natural progression of things that the timing worked out perfectly for his high school reunion to double as the Olympic team. If it had all been some predetermined bullshit, Hinata Shouyou, who sprouted from the concrete, would have been born two feet taller with everything the world had to offer at his fingertips. He wouldn't have needed to pack up and upend his whole life to create a name for himself in Brazil. He wouldn't be Ninja Shouyou.

If volleyball had always been written in the stars, Atsumu believed the story would have progressed in a linear, predictable fashion. Blow everyone's mind at your debut game. Defeat your lifelong rival. Become Japan's prodigal son. Make it to the national team. 

Hinata held the pen to his own story, so at the beginning of his second V.League season, he received an invitation to try out for a foreign team in São Paulo, Brazil. It had kicked up a storm in the national volleyball circuit as, technically, it was a breach of contract. His initial offer with the Black Jackals was five years, and he'd barely completed two—two phenomenal, explosive years which brought more press and exposure to the Black Jackals than the CEO of MSBY himself could probably imagine, but two premature years nonetheless. 

One year of prohibition trial, if Hinata did well at the tryouts—which he knew he would—to be renegotiated only if Hinata performed the way ASAS expected he would. Atsumu knew that Hinata would say yes before Hinata told him himself; it was awfully predictable of him, Atsumu thought. If the offer had been intended for Atsumu, he, too, would drop everything for a chance to play for the country that ranked first worldwide. More than anyone, he understood that the hunger for the game outweighed everything else, and if it meant he had to readjust to his relationship mainly taking place over the internet, then it was simply a direct consequence. Newton's third law, or whatever. 

As pissed as MSBY was, when the reckoning came and Hinata's pudding-haired Youtuber/stock-trader/CEO of Bouncing Ball Ltd. please-don't-be-an-ex paid off his fine in doubles, no one objected. A stark reminder that volleyball was as much a business as it was a sport, a fact that Atsumu had always known, but had only now seen in practice. When money did the talking, no one really needed to talk. The local volleyball community took the news with glee, especially fans of Ninja Shouyou, who all had a common sentiment of wanting Hinata to play for a foreign league, surpass even bigger monsters. 

(There were also memes about Kenma being Hinata's sugar daddy. Not as amusing. He believed Hinata should have more concern about the way his fans behaved, but Hinata only laughed it off. Not for the first time, Atsumu grew suspicious of the insistent way that Hinata maintained Kenma was not an ex, _just_ a friend. Great, okay, now what _kind,_ exactly? No _just_ a friend would spend millions of yen on _just_ another friend if there was nothing else going on, right? _Shou-kun, don't laugh at me_ — _)_

In reality, it took six months and the end of a global pandemic (right, a small detail to breeze through, no worries) to finalize the contract, but to Atsumu, who refused to count the days, it felt like it passed in a flash. Suddenly, Hinata no longer got up with him for their evening practice. His #21 jersey lay unfolded under their bed, shoved together with the gold-striped black volleyball shoes that he traded for the red and blue of ASAS São Paulo. Suddenly, he woke up one day and found Hinata's clothes packed in the 28-inch/80-liter Delsey suitcase, the same one he brought for his first pilgrimage in Brazil. Even his toiletries, in the last days, were stocked inside a zip-lock bag, ready to be stuffed into a carry-on backpack for a 30-hour flight.

(But we just moved in, Atsumu didn't say. But we just bought a new bed, see? We haven't even finished breaking it in. What about the new set of coffee percolator that hasn't arrived? The succulents you insisted we name after every Greek tragedy?)

Too late, Atsumu blinked awake one day to find himself materializing in autumn, sitting behind the wheel, queuing to drop Hinata off at departure. Hinata sat shotgun, looking ahead, while his sister—Natsu—and mother, who came all the way from Miyagi to see him off, sat at the back, talking his ears off with well-wishes.

There was a story there, if Atsumu could bring himself to remember. About a boy of seventeen and a tall, tall wall looming in front of him. A lonely bus ride, a quiet goodbye. No goodbyes at all. Corners of a room and fish-skin chips. Atsumu was numb all over, but he could feel enough to understand that he never wanted Shouyou to feel the way that he did, the first time. He could pretend that the grip Hinata had on his left hand—thank god for automatic cars—said the same thing, too. _I don't want you to be lonely. I'm here. I'm still here._

Eventually, the gods had to return to Olympus. Hera beckoned Zeus back as Hades to Persephone; there was a place, higher than the ground they stood on, where they were worshipped with everything the world had to offer. That place was not here for Hinata Shouyou.

“See you soon,” Hinata murmured, squeezing his hand at departure Gate F, fielding calls of boarding. 

And Atsumu had no choice but to hold on to that.

*

Rain fell in sheets unusually in the middle of June, 2019. Osaka’s summer rain always hit differently, but Atsumu remembered the date specifically because it was the day they received the news at the same time.

One second, they were lying in bed, Atsumu cuddled up to Shouyou's side, then the next moment, twin shrill ringtones cut through the serene silence, both scrambling, bare-ass naked, to get to their respective phones. Atsumu ran to the kitchen so his manager wouldn't hear the sound of Shouyou's voice in the background, and they made sure to stay out of each other's way until the call was finished. They reconvened in the living room, twin smiles stretching over their mouths.

"You first," Atsumu had said to Shouyou.

He had a glimmer in his eyes that was intoxicating. He looked in awe of himself, holding his phone (a new purchase, Atsumu annoyed him about his cracked screen until Shouyou gave in and bought a new one) gingerly in his palm. "I made it to the national team," Shouyou said. Atsumu whooped. Then, once again, with more gusto, _"I made it to the national team!"_

Shouyou leaped into his arms, and Atsumu, who might be taller and heavier in size but nowhere near ready to receive all eighty kilograms of pure muscle, stumbled and fell in a heap of giddy, genuine laughter.

"2020 fuckin' Olympics!" Atsumu had howled. "Hosted here, in motherfuckin' Japan!"

"Wait, what about you—"

Atsumu seized him and flipped them over. With a smirk that he knew Shouyou loved and hated in equal measure, he said, "World, ya better pay attention," he leaned down, kissed the tender skin under Shouyou's ear, "yer lookin' at a set of Olympian boyfriends."

And Shouyou huffed, socked him in the shoulder and rolled his eyes and complained, "You're so dramatic," but he had taken Atsumu by the face and kissed his mouth with the intention to ruin him, and Atsumu let it deepen. 

Blame it on the off-season excess energy, but immediately after that was a fuck that followed Atsumu to his dreams, riding Shouyou and panting to each other's mouth, Shouyou’s nails leaving red marks all over his hips, waist, his back reddened with rug burn. They’d christened yet another part of the apartment— _their_ apartment now, because Shouyou had asked Atsumu for a spare key and he’d given it to him without a second thought, a little over a month ago. In the after, they lay spent on the baptized rug, scrolling through official announcements for the 2020 Summer Olympic National Volleyball Team Official Line-Up.

Hoshiumi Kourai. Hyakuzawa Yuudai (206 centimeters, fuck yeah). Hakuba Gao. Ojiro Aran (a world of fuck yeahs). Yaku Morisuke (Russian team, shortest, rumored best libero in the league). Komori Motoya, Sakusa Kiyoomi. Bokuto Koutarou. Ushijima Wakatoshi. 

Kageyama Tobio.

This time, the federation did not hesitate to put number one on Ushijima. 

(Bokuto had apparently tentatively asked for 4, the number traditionally meant for aces, like a chewed-out kid unsure if he was still deserving of another helping of ice cream for dessert. When the coach told him the number was always reserved for him, he'd lit up like a Christmas tree.)

Shouyou asked for 10, after the Little Giant. Atsumu asked for 11, following right behind him. As they fell asleep on the happiest day of Atsumu’s life, Shouyou traced two fingers down his torso, a ghost of his jersey number, and said, "Osamu's number, huh?"

*

It was hard not to throw himself a pity party when everything about Akaashi Keiji reminded him of it.

There was a time where Atsumu would consider him a trophy husband—he certainly had the look for it, all willowy and delicate, long hands, hanging on the arm of a rich celebrity athlete like the perfect arm candy. He even had the generic writing-related job of every hapless heroine in a rom-com movie. Except last year, his anthology of East Asian queer history rose to the ranks of New York Times bestseller, and at five-million copies sold worldwide in 27 different languages, he was well on his way to becoming the second coming of Haruki Murakami. Or some other equally popular Japanese writer that Atsumu never heard of before, whatever.

Knowing how sickening they were, Atsumu would bet they considered each other the trophy husband. He knew Bokuto certainly wouldn't mind; he trended as the nation's beloved himbo after a compilation video of him introducing himself as Akaashi Keiji's husband went viral on Twitter, and promptly added that to his bio in an act of shameless love. Sometimes, Atsumu forgot that they resided in different cities, Bokuto in Osaka as per his MSBY obligations, and Akaashi in Tokyo, with his publisher. Like him, Bokuto had decided to pass up on the standard-issued Akasaka apartment and live with Akaashi for the duration of the training until he had to relocate to the Olympic Village.

Sitting across from Atsumu, the stench of pity radiated off of him in waves. He might have his laptop at eye-level on the work desk he and Shouyou never used, but the fact that he willingly stayed past the obligatory hello—Atsumu felt acutely like he was on suicide watch. As if at his current state, he'd be able to fling himself off the balcony. 

"Why haven't you left?" Atsumu asked.

Akaashi stopped typing. 

"Do you want me to leave?"

"Kinda. Yer way too noisy with all the click-click-click."

"Would that make you feel better?"

A vein in his forehead twitched. "Isn't it enough that my own boyfriend treats me like I'm made of glass? Why does he have to go around and make his friends pity me too? I'm not as fucked up over this as he thinks, I keep telling him, but he won't fucking listen and now you're here—" he gestured at the general direction of Akaashi, "when you don't even like me. Honestly, at any other time, I'd be flattered that you cared this much, but right now I'm just pissed."

Akaashi got up, seated himself down on the chair across from Atsumu. He looked like he was carefully approaching a scared deer he’d accidentally hit on the road. Atsumu wished he could punch himself in the face.

"You're right. I don't like you."

Atsumu snorted. "The newsflash of the year, really."

"But," Akaashi started.

Atsumu groaned. "Seriously—"

"You did help me with Koutarou." The words sounded like they were punched out of his chest, like it pained him just to acknowledge it. Atsumu blinked. Fists on his knees, Akaashi pushed on, "As much as I hate to admit it."

"I could tell, don't worry."

"And I never said thank you."

"You'd only be three years late, but you're welcome."

"That wasn't it," Akaashi clarified. He said this with all the excitement of reporting traffic jams in Shibuya. "... thank you, for what you did. Getting me that ticket was the final push I needed to finally confess to him. So consider this… a payback of sorts. You aided me in times of need, and I am merely returning the favor."

That was more earnest than Atsumu wanted. He itched to move the leg inside the cast. He contemplated what to do: heckle Akaashi just to see how long until he cracked, or ask him the question that had always been plaguing the back of his mind ever since Shouyou left: _how the hell do you deal with it? The distance? Does it wake you up at night? How do you believe he still loves you?_

Yeah, not a chance. He'd much rather irritate Akaashi out of his apartment.

"Well… if you're here to help me…"

He leaned back against his chair, pillowing his head on his arms, smirk devilish. To his credit, Akaashi barely reacted.

"I'm thirsty, Keiji-kun," oh, he must look so positively shit-eating, the look that Osamu said would prompt the mildest-mannered man in Japan to knock the lights out of him, but a wall of control that Akaashi was, he stayed so carefully neutral. Atsumu was going to love annoying the shit out of him. "Get me a drink."

For a split second, Atsumu was so sure that Akaashi saw his entire life flash before his eyes. It was gone as soon as he spotted it, so perhaps Atsumu had imagined it. Wouldn't it be fun, though, if Atsumu affected him that much.

But Akaashi got up, calm as before the storm came, and fetched an empty glass from the cupboard.

"Do you want food, too?" Akaashi asked as he filled his glass. "I can cook you some."

And he thought, Akaashi, calm and composed, wore glasses, could wrangle all of Bokuto's 190 centimeters worth of puppy excitement, probably had his life together, right? He could probably cook. Bokuto always raved about how his bentos _are the best, Tsum-Tsum!_ so, in hindsight, there was no risk in letting Akaashi cook. Right?

Atsumu made sure his words were dripping with sickeningly sweet honey. 

"That would be awesome, Keiji-kun," he leaned obnoxiously back on his chair, making a show of stretching his back and extending one arm behind his head as a pillow. The picture of indulgence. "I am _starving_."

Wrong.

Atsumu learned the hard way he should never judge a book by its cover when fifty minutes later, he sat dumbfounded in his chair as the fire alarm went off, building security knocking frantically at his door.

*

"You're fucking insane," Atsumu declared, when the smoke had been weeded out and his ears weren't filled with the ringing of his fire alarm.

"Thank you," Akaashi said absentmindedly, scrolling through UberEats. He was perfectly unaffected, as if dealing with kitchen fires were a normal weekly occurrence. His hair didn’t even move, still in that artistically messy style that only guys with Akaashi’s face and stature could pull off. "So, katsu or sushi?"

"Um," Atsumu said, stunned. "I'll just—have whatever you have."

"Then I'll have Onigiri Miya."

Akaashi was not to be messed with, Atsumu concluded, cautiously deciding to be civil from now on.

*

A list of things Atsumu counted on while he waited for Hinata to return to Japan:

  1. His serves. 
  2. His ten fingers.
  3. Setting for Hinata again on the world stage. (Or have Hinata set for _him_ again, like in the final match versus the Adlers two years ago. He’d seen Hinata angle his body towards the nets, and if Atsumu spent less time observing the way his fingers moved perhaps he wouldn’t have noticed it, but the moment all his fingers extended out, Atsumu knew with earth-shattering clarity that Hinata would set and he jumped on instinct, calling out for him.)
  4. Their little family of succulents. (He named the one that looked like a salad bowl Orpheus, and placed it in direct sunlight on the windowsill in the living room. “So he could never look back,” Hinata reasoned, and that was just the essence of Hinata Shouyou, wasn’t it? To leave things better than when he found them. Another helping of second chances. Happy endings.)
  5. “How’s your serve, Atsumu-san?” Hinata asked behind his laptop screen, two am in Rio and two pm in Osaka, his hands twitching with the need to cradle his jaw and tuck his stray hair behind his ear, and touch his eyelids. He told Hinata it was excellent.
  6. If he had nothing, he still had volleyball.
  7. And if he still had volleyball, he still had Hinata.
  8. If he had Hinata, he had everything.
  9. His forearms, digging a ball up. The force behind his palms. 120 km/h spike serves. Clinically accurate sets.
  10. “See you soon,” Hinata said at the departure gates. His mother and Natsu were watching, but their hands were closed around each other, fingers intertwined like if Atsumu held on enough, he could delay the flight. But there was a promise in there, if Atsumu ever allowed himself to believe in it.



*

While in Brazil, their relationship hit a standstill. There was only so much they could say over Skype, so many times they could say _I miss you_ until it became meaningless, when there was no more comfort to be had from silence over seventeen thousand kilometers. Hinata should at least have a modicum of sense to be _awkward_ when he returned; instead, when Atsumu picked him up at the airport, he had been nothing but affectionate, attacking him with the biggest bear hug he’d received in his life. He’d taken Atsumu’s hand, sweaty from nerves, and Atsumu had tried to make excuses to at least wipe them down the back of his pants, but Hinata held on, and just like that—business as usual. Long distance over. 

But Atsumu ached in the remains of Hinata in his Osaka apartment, the mismatched socks he didn't take with him to Brazil, the coffee percolator that arrived two weeks after he took off. He spent the days he wasn't on court like a ghost, looking for his body, fuming at himself for feeling _hurt_ when he knew he would've done the same if it had been him, pissed again at Osamu for fucking off in the same year to America to pursue an MBA, because _why in the hell would ya subject yourself to more studying, ya fuckin' nerd?_

Angry, because Hinata said _see you soon._ He didn't ask for permission to take _home_ with him, and now Atsumu lived in a stranger's place, unfamiliar with the sound of his own footsteps. Because Hinata fucked him so well it left him branded, and told him, _You have to tell me how you feel, okay? While I’m away,_ like Atsumu could ever sit still enough to let his feelings take on a name. To communicate them with Hinata over twelve hours of time difference. Because every morning while he was away, Hinata called him, and there was his face, beautiful and smiling and _happy_ like being away from Atsumu didn't make him want to crawl out of his skin and make a new body out of the untouched side of his bed that belonged to Hinata. Because they began to have many fights, pixelated over Skype, sometimes started over nothing because Atsumu just needed something that wasn’t a formality ‘how are you.’

“Why won’t you just _talk_ to me, Tsumu?” Hinata had said. “I can’t guess what you feel. I don’t want to keep forcing you to talk like this.”

He was exhausted, Atsumu could tell; less than six hours of sleep would make him grumpy and dazed the next day. He had a big game coming up. They both did—a Black Jackals rematch with the Adlers, except with Kageyama and Ushijima gone, it mattered less to him now. Atsumu played alongside a little giant; he knew how to incapacitate one, in return.

Atsumu could pick from a myriad of reasons that swam around his head aimlessly: _because it’s so hard to talk to you. I don’t know what to say except I miss you. I didn’t want you to see how much I need._ If he could find the strength to say any of those things, maybe none of it would drag on for too long. Maybe that’d be the last day of hurting, but those were all too honest, so he began to lie. 

It should alarm him more than it did how easy it was to fall back on lying; then again, Osamu already called him a habitual liar, so to him, it was like a prophecy self-fulfilled. Hinata Shouyou was not easy to fool, always able to see things that Atsumu hadn’t even admitted to himself. The existence of a screen between them was what made it possible; with the time difference, Atsumu was able to construct a plan. Keep everything in his drafts, send neutral texts instead. Skirt around sensitive topics, like _I stopped watering the succulents_ or _my mom asked about you again_ and talk only about their common ground: volleyball. Volleyball was safe, volleyball was _everything_ their relationship revolved around. Hold out hope. In a year, Hinata would come home, and he’d set to him again and nothing had to hurt anymore.

He forgot he was meant to stop lying when Hinata came home. Perhaps he didn’t even realize he was doing it. The relief at having Hinata within reach was too strong, and this bubble that he’d meticulously built around them was safe, too comfortable to prick with unnecessary things like feelings of abandonment. Why bring up the past? The troubles of yesterday were no trouble for today. All he had to focus on was the present. 

And in the present, Hinata was his spiker. If he’d gotten too good at lying, it didn’t matter anyway. He didn’t need to be honest when playing volleyball.

*

In junior high school, Atsumu had his first panic attack. It was a Saturday night and Osamu went to a sleepover Atsumu wasn’t invited to. “Look,” Osamu had explained patiently, as if Atsumu wasn’t the older by two minutes. “No one there likes ya, ‘kay? I need them to like me. If ya tag along they’ll call me a party-pooper, and I ain’t one.”

“I’ll tell ya what you are,” Atsumu had pointed an accusing finger, “yer just a plain pooper!”

“Everyone poops, Tsumu!” Osamu had yelled. That was true, and Atsumu wracked his brain for better insults. He hadn’t been able to find any. 

“But you poop the _worst!_ ”

“That don’t even make sense!”

He slept alone for the first time that night. For how much he’d complained to his mother about moving to a bigger place so he’d never have to share another room with his brother, that night alone felt daunting. The walls seemed to close in on him, the darkness stifling. He’d cocooned himself around his blanket, but he felt hot and cold at the same time, skin sticking to his pyjamas uncomfortably like when he sweated through his training t-shirts, except there was no joy at sight. His mother found him sobbing when she checked in, like she always did each night because he liked sneaking in his old, battered Game Boy to stay up past bedtime, rushed to him and gathered him in his arms, whispering sweet-sounding lullabies. 

He’d grown taller than her last summer, they both had, but on her lap, he felt so small, smaller than an ant. “One good thing, one bad thing, baby,” she had said, referring to their custom catching-up method. “Can you tell me one each?”

Atsumu turned his brain inside and out trying to find just _one_ good thing. He came up blank. He had no friends, though he told Osamu he couldn’t care less. Osamu was the better setter, and his serves were wobbly at best. If love had been the mud on the wall like his father had said, then all this time, all Atsumu had done was bulldoze it over and over again until he was the only left in the debris. 

“Everything is bad,” he had said, choking on a wail, “everything is bad and I don’t know what to do.”

*

“One good thing, one bad thing?” 

They were at the infirmary. Atsumu had forwarded his final draft of the withdrawal statement to his manager. In a few hours, the Volleyball Monthly online portal would post the story, along with a cursory picture Atsumu was asked to take of himself, just to reassure the fans that he was fine, considering. 

Hinata didn’t have the red jacket on. Atsumu could tell he wanted to hold his hand. He felt ashamed of it. 

“Everything is bad,” he answered. 

*

The last time they talked, they fought.

Atsumu was used to fighting. Until in high school, he spent most days of the week covered in scratches from petty fights with his brother over stolen food and articles of clothing. The verbal fights with the former third years, before Kita assumed captaincy, was no less frequent. The cornering after school, the insults—these fights passed through like air, leaving him unscathed, because he knew he was in the right. 

Fighting with Hinata was different. 

Two days before Hinata was scheduled to leave for the Olympic village, in their rental Tokyo apartment, Atsumu sat on the ugly cow-print loveseat that they both started out hating but grew into liking. The leg—the one that was broken—was propped up on the coffee table. He held an iPad in his hands, frowning over the most roundabout, complicated question in the GMAT practice test he impulsively bought for five hundred yens off of some career preparation website.

"Hey, Shouyou-kun. I have a question."

Hinata mumbled a low yes. He was making green tea in the kitchen. Atsumu could hear him mixing the powder with the bamboo whisk his mother insisted on sending as a housewarming gift, even after Atsumu explained to her that the apartment was temporary.

"So, imagine a village. The people are super devoted to this one ancient religion, where the belief is that those who are born with a red dot on their foreheads are cursed and should leave the village—"

"Wait,” Hinata said, sounding panicked. “I feel like I should write this down. Should I write this down? Red dots? Are there other colors?”

Atsumu craned his neck to shoot Hinata a dirty look. "I was getting there, Shouyou-kun. Don't interrupt me."

"Well, sorry," Hinata said with a laugh, and Atsumu thought, there. That laugh again. He should record it, maybe, next time, if the mere idea didn't make him feel so pathetic. He heard his footsteps approaching, and looked up to see Hinata, two cups of steaming green tea in his hands, smiling indulgently. He set Atsumu’s cup on the table, and held to his stomach as he plopped down next to Atsumu sheepishly. "You know full well I'm a huge dumbass."

Atsumu held up a finger. "Just listen carefully. The people in this village were born with either red dots or blue dots on their foreheads. Now, according to their religion, the red dots have to leave the village—"

"Red dots bad,” Hinata muttered to himself seriously. “Got it."

"But, the tenets of the religion also stated that it is forbidden to talk about the dots amongst themselves. _And_ because mirrors are also forbidden, no one in this village ever knows what the color of the dots on their foreheads is. So no one in the history of the village has ever left the village."

Hinata scrunched up his nose. "That feels very much counterproductive."

"That's devotion for ya, I guess," Atsumu shrugged. "So, one day, this village opens up their gates for tourists. And this one guy comes up to them and asks, why do some of you have red dots and some of you have blue dots on your foreheads? Obviously, the village is, like, in complete shock, so my question for you is, Shouyou-kun, what do you think will happen once the tourists leave?"

“Are there options?” Hinata asked. “Wait, can you repeat—I think I do need to take notes.”

“Nope, it’s an essay, and there will be no repeat.”

“Why are you looking at essay questions, of all things?” Hinata leaned over, peeking at Atsumu’s screen. He predicted the double-take correctly. “GMAT test?”

Atsumu turned his screen away. “Just bored. Come on, Shouyou, just play along.”

“I mean—are you planning to go back to school? Is that what’s happening?” Hinata said. “‘Cause I would totally support it, it’s just kind of—sudden? Do you know what you want to study yet?”

“No, this ain’t for school, and—humor me, Shouyou. Would ya deny a sick man his little pleasures?”

“Atsumu—”

He turned to him. There was hesitance in the gesture of Hinata’s body, in the way he was aligned towards Atsumu but not quite touching, grappling in the dark like he would with a soap lost in the baths. “I—” he began, shook his head, restarted. “I wasn’t sure, these days, and I wasn't going to say anything in case I made a big deal out of nothing, but, Tsumu… lately, you seem so very far away.”

Atsumu laughed. Part of the ruse, see. Go along with everything with a happy mind. “I’m right here, though?” he said, making grabby hands at Hinata. 

But Hinata wasn’t entertaining it. Atsumu wondered where he went wrong, which tone gave himself away. 

“No,” he murmured. “I don’t know when I first noticed it, but I felt like—like you’re hiding, or something. And I don’t know why. I thought we were fine, the past two months were _normal,_ so maybe I’m seeing things I shouldn’t—”

“Maybe you are,” Atsumu said. “Maybe I just want to ask you riddles, why is that so hard for you to understand?”

He knew where his error lied, this time—the rise in his voice, at the end. The exasperation. The pathetic desperation at holding together his lone-man operation. Hinata’s gaze changed, sharpened, that penetrating gaze that Atsumu knew meant Hinata was reading him for filth. In an instant, he had been found out.

"Atsumu," he murmured, low, setting his cup next to Atsumu's. He hadn't even taken a sip. "Your career isn't over."

If he gripped his device any tighter, he would probably break it. He let go. "Anyway," he said, forcing a sweet, unbothered smile, "it's not a right or wrong question. Apparently, from your answer, they can like, gauge your personality and how compatible you are to what the company needs—"

"This is _just_ a setback," Hinata pushed, not getting the memo. And people said Atsumu was the one unattuned to social cues. He placed a hand on Atsumu's bicep. "We still have—the FIVB world championship next year, and Iwaizumi-san said—"

"I know what Iwaizumi said, Shouyou, I was _there_."

Hinata flinched. Shit. Atsumu didn't mean to snap.

"Hey, speaking of Iwaizumi, how's he doing these days, huh? He found a polo shirt that fits his arms yet?"

"You're deflecting," Hinata said, because he no longer bought Atsumu's bullshit. "Tsumu, can you _please_ talk to me? I know you're upset but you're acting so—chipper these days, and I hate it."

"Then leave."

Fuck. He regretted it the second the words were out of his mouth.

Hinata gaped at him. "Excuse me?"

Yeah, he regretted this so much.

"Forget it," he huffed, running a hand through his hair. He scrolled through the GMAT questions, but the kanjis seemed to blur together. He wiped at his eyes. 

He was not fucking crying, dammit.

"Atsumu."

Hinata's voice had risen, too. Stern like Atsumu had never heard him before. He reached into Atsumu's lap and pried his iPad away, setting them on the other end table. 

They were going to fight, Atsumu thought dizzily. Not like the fights they had over whose turn it was to take out the trash or whether or not it would be disrespectful to donate the ugly loveseat to a local Goodwill or the meaningless, aching ones they had over video calls—the remnants of warmth dissipated from Hinata's eyes, and he looked at Atsumu with a storm brewing underneath. He also looked sad, which was puzzling to Atsumu, because he had no right to be. He was playing wing spiker to Kageyama's genius setter, wearing the 9 and 10 of their childhood, on top of the world stage like they had always wanted—what more could Hinata want? Why must he take sadness too? That belonged to Atsumu, fuck all.

"I said forget it, okay?" Atsumu said. He wished he could stand up, get away from his stupid sad eyes. Stupid goddamn leg. "It's not important."

"If it escalated so quickly, then it's clearly not _not_ important."

Atsumu sighed. "I'm sorry I told you to leave. There. Is that what you want to hear?"

"I just want to know why your first instinct was to tell me to leave. Did I do something?" Hinata pleaded, so clueless it made him want to punch himself in the face. "What did I do to make you feel like this?"

"Nothing! Fuck, you did _nothing,_ Shouyou. Why do you have to make everything about you?"

"Then tell me what this is about," Hinata said. Atsumu refused to look at him. "Atsumu."

"It's nothing."

Hinata took a deep breath. " _Baby_."

Oh, that's just playing dirty, Atsumu thought. Hinata Shouyou didn't fight fair. Nevertheless, his resolve was stronger and motivated by spite, and he prevailed, looking steadfastly at the tiny spot of dirt on the opposite wall. Nowhere but Hinata's searching eyes.

Hands were on his knee, the unbroken one. Hinata had moved, now balancing on the balls of his feet in front of him, Atsumu's leg eye-level to Hinata's head, angled up at him. Hinata caught him, and Atsumu couldn't escape. "Hey," he said. "Baby. Talk to me, please."

Atsumu's next breath was shaky, racking his shoulders. "I—" he started, then stopped, feeling so much like he was being made to stand next to a cliff. "Will you leave me?" he asked instead. "Will you leave me if I can no longer play volleyball?"

And he'd expected the silence that followed, understood that he'd essentially dropped a bomb, but he had no way to prepare for the way it sent Hinata reeling like he'd been hit. Hinata’s hands slid off his knee. "Why—why would you ask me that?" Hinata said, and oh, he looked hurt. "Did—did I not love you enough? What more am I supposed to do? Didn't I come back to you?"

 _Did you?_ Atsumu wanted to shout. Instead, he let his palm support his forehead and pleaded, "Don't say it like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you did me a favor by coming back."

Something close to a snarl ripped out of Shouyou's mouth. "A _favor_?"

"I meant it, you know, Shouyou-kun," he held his head up, heavy as it felt. "When I said you just had to give me half of your heart, I didn't just mean Tobio-kun."

"We're _still_ talking about Kageyama?"

"Of course we always will! Who're you chasing around the world, huh, Shouyou? He started playing for an Italian team and the next day you decided to pack up and leave too?"

It was so petty, so childish of him. He thought he was over it.

He really thought he'd gotten better at this.

"It isn't him, you asshole, it's the _volleyball—_ "

"Exactly, Shouyou-kun. Guess which sport I can't play right now." Atsumu almost laughed at the stricken look on Hinata's face, the realization that he'd walked right into Atsumu's bait. There was probably poetic justice behind that, being the greatest decoy and falling right for it. "You should've told me if I was always going to be second place, Shouyou-kun. I told you I don't mind it, but it's not nice to move in with the guy then leave for a year immediately after. A real love 'em and leave 'em type, ain’tcha?"

"It's not permanent, goddammit!" Hinata was standing up now. How rich of him, making Atsumu look up. "Why do you always do this, Atsumu?"

"Do what, Shouyou-kun?"

"Put me on some kind of a pedestal."

Atsumu truly laughed then. "You do think highly of yourself, don't you?"

"But you do. You treat me like I'm above you. Like you're supposed to do something in exchange for me to stay with you." Hinata was walking away. Fuck, _Hinata was walking away._

"Well, fuck," he said, half to himself, frantically searching for words in the midst of his rising panic, "isn't that what relationships are? Equal efforts or some shit?"

Hinata ignored him, putting on his shoes, slipping on his track jacket. His mouth kept running. "And you keep things in. You hold it like a deck of cards you can use to strike me one day. I don't like it. You should just tell me how you feel, Tsumu." Both shoes tied, he stared gravely at Atsumu. "Volleyball is not a prerequisite for me to stay with you."

"Then what?" _Don't leave. Don't leave. Please don't leave._

"I don't know," Hinata sighed, his hand on the doorknob, "the fact that I love you?"

Atsumu couldn't dignify that with an answer. What was he supposed to say to that? That he didn't—couldn't—believe it? How would he go about reconciling that with the complicated feelings he had about Hinata leaving?

But Hinata took it to mean something else. There was an ugly twist in his smile when he chuckled, like he couldn't believe his luck. "I'm going for a run," Hinata said. "Don't wait up."

He left, and Atsumu hadn't been able to chase after him. He stared accusingly at his cast, pristine white only because he outright outlawed anyone from writing on it, least of all Bokuto, who had been ready with five different colored Sharpies when he visited him at the infirmary. Stupid fucking leg.

Then he stared heatedly at the door, hoping the wind carried his seething rage to Hinata. _Fucking jerk,_ he thought. _You know I can't catch up with you._

*

"Hey, Aka-chan."

"Don't call me that."

"... Keiji-kun?"

There, a long-suffering sigh. Akaashi looked up, looking for all the world like he'd rather be diving in Mariana's Trench with stones in his pocket. "Do you need anything, Atsumu-san?" It was a marvel how he managed to sound so detached and unaffected. Atsumu was beginning to have a hard time imagining lively, 120% on Bokuto falling for this man with minimal expressions. 

(Except, no. He was just being mean. Akaashi was nothing if not unrestrained with Bokuto; he'd seen it with his own eyes, even long before they got together, in the izakaya three years ago, in the many matches Akaashi had attended since then. The way Akaashi seemed to brighten under Bokuto's attention, like a sky full of stars. 

And that was it, wasn't it? What love was? Finding the exception to your rules?)

"So stingy, Keiji, jeez," Atsumu said. Then he remembered the fire alarm, and amended, “I mean, okay, do you have time? I need to ask you a question.”

Akaashi let out another sigh. It seemed to be his automatic response to all things Atsumu. He typed furiously for a few seconds, then closed his laptop. He looked like a man resigned with his death sentence. “What is it,” Atsumu could _feel_ him refraining from rolling his eyes, “Atsumu-san?”

The preliminary games were on the television. Brazil was flattening Tunisia to the ground, and they looked like they derived zero pleasure from it. The third set was flying by without much resistance from the red side of the court, rallies lasting more less than ten seconds before the ball slammed into the opposite court, widening again the point difference. Hinata left for the Olympic village a week ago. They hadn’t talked much since the fight, not that Atsumu was interested in changing the status quo. He had no intention of being the bigger person.

Atsumu thought about asking Akaashi the questions he’d marinated in his head since his injury—perhaps, now, longer than that. Except his mouth had become a cage, and no substantial words were able to escape. He arrived in the body of himself two and a half years ago, the juvenile setter of Black Jackals staring after his spiker and his high school lover in an izakaya over sake, pondering on the meaning of soulmates and fate. 

Akaashi waited impatiently. His eyebrows were so high up his forehead they had practically disappeared up to his hairline. 

On the television, Brazil wrapped up the game with a seven point difference. Soon, the program would play a five-minute highlight of the game, followed by advertisements from Olympic sponsors. He would probably see the Onigiri Miya ad that had been haunting his YouTube videos for weeks now, the tear-jerker story of a blind man trying out every single onigiri shop in Tokyo in search of the one he had his first date with his long-dead wife, starring breakout star Haruki Komi, former volleyball star. Everything in his life revolved around fucking volleyball.

“Why didn’t Bokkun go to Italy?” he asked. “He got offered a five-year contract, right? Paid in dollars. Modena Volley, if I remember correctly.” There was no way he’d get the name wrong; the minute the news broke among the team, he began a deep-dive into Modena as a volleyball team, counted their wins and losses, matched up the members’ stats against the team’s own. Call it healthy rivalry curiosity; Atsumu still had no idea what it meant that he had no foreign invitations of his own.

“Ah,” Akaashi said, clearly caught off guard. “MSBY gave him a better offer.”

“Bokkun’s not the type to chase after money, though,” Atsumu said. 

Akaashi nudged his laptop away, his full attention on Atsumu now. He always looked like he was thinking hard about his next words, a feat that Atsumu could unfortunately not say he related to. “He had a back injury, a month before, as you can recall,” Akaashi murmured. “It’s nothing serious, thankfully, but it’s enough to make him think twice about playing in foreign league. Italy has a much less stringent policy when it comes to health insurance, and he’s not willing to take that risk.”

“Huh,” Atsumu mused. “That’s… surprisingly mundane.”

Perhaps more surprising: Akaashi chuckled. The corners of his eyes crinkled, mouth turned up like an upside down bridge, and briefly, Atsumu thought, _okay, I can kinda see where Bokuto’s coming from_ before the person in question fixed his sharp eyes on Atsumu all knowingly and said, “You must’ve thought he stayed for me.”

“You’re telling me that’s not even a fraction of it?” Atsumu gaped. Maybe love really was a scam.

Akaashi looked offended at even the mere suggestion of it. “I would never ask Koutarou to give up volleyball.”

“Well, obviously not,” Atsumu grumbled, feeling like Akaashi was accusing him of something. He felt uneasy, watching the television but not registering a single thing said. Japan was facing Venezuela in less than an hour; in preparation, the program was running a brief supercut of the Japanese national team’s members’ best plays. By some sick joke, this was the version without Atsumu edited out, and miserable on a stupid cow-print loveseat, Atsumu saw with his own two eyes the sensational freak quick of his and Hinata's, the dorky claw hands they threw at each other across the court before barelling into each other, laughing.

Yeah, fuck the Olympics committee.

“How could they provide the village with fuckin’—condom dispensers but not air the right fuckin’ ad? Seriously?” he threw frustrated hands at the television. “Turn it off,” he glared at Akaashi, because he was the one who had the remote. 

Akaashi sighed (he should start a sigh counter at this point). “You don’t want to watch the Venezuela match?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I do,” Akaashi said. Atsumu was starting to really favor the version of Akaashi in his head that wanted to kill him. “Koutarou will be sad if I don’t watch him.”

“Like he’d know?” 

“Oh, believe me,” Akaashi nodded all sagely, “he would.”

Atsumu wanted to bang his head against the wall and maybe also bungee-jump out of the window without the safety elastic cord. 

“Okay, yeah, I know you guys are the perfect couple,” Atsumu groused, watching a zoom-in of Sakusa’s bendy wrists in slow-motion with his chin in one hand. Happy couples. He hated the happy couples. “No need to rub it in my face.”

“Says you.”

Startled, Atsumu barked out a mirthless laugh. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not?”

Atsumu glared at him. “Keiji-kun, I really wouldn’t take you for a mean one, but you _really_ know how to pour salt on my wounds, you know?”

“But I’m not joking?” Akaashi said, forehead creasing. “Are you fighting with Hinata right now?”

“Yeah?”

“... really?”

“Why would I lie about fighting with my boyfriend?”

Akaashi opened his mouth, then closed it. Tilted his head, like he was trying to make sense of a really, really wordy and complicated GMAT question, opened and closed his mouth like a fish stranded on land. The worst thing, in Atsumu’s opinion, was that he looked genuinely _baffled,_ like he’d really believed all this time that he and Hinata were the paragon of perfect couples, and now that his worldview had just been debunked, he was having an existential crisis. 

“Koutarou and I aren’t a perfect couple,” Akaashi stated.

Atsumu really, really wanted to scream. “This is not one of those things where I compliment you and you’re supposed to act all humble about it because societal norms are weird, Keiji-kun. You can actually _take_ this compliment,” he huffed, turning back to the television. Maybe there was a reason why Akaashi stayed stoic and impassive all the time; facing a confused Akaashi was off-putting. Frankly, on the same list as the time he caught his parents having sex pre-divorce.

“Is that what you really think?”

“It’s what _everyone_ thinks!” Atsumu exclaimed. He wished he could leap at Akaashi and shake him to consciousness, fire alarms be damned. “You know everyone on the team calls him Thanos?”

“No?”

“Yeah, because he’s got like, everything at the palm of his hand.” He could run the check off the top of his head: cover with Japanese GQ? Check. National team ace? Check. Had a limited edition custom-made Adidas sneakers shipped off exclusively for him? Check. Attractive, doting boyfriend of an equal standing, supporting him in a very healthy, very happy relationship? Check, check. 

“Of all fictional characters,” Akaashi put his forehead in his hands, “why Thanos?”

“Not everyone is a literary buff like you, Mr. Bestseller.”

“Thanos is the perfect example of a one-dimensional _villain_ and his reasoning doesn’t even—” he shook his head, stopped himself like he just remembered he was in the audience of someone who couldn’t care less what Thanos’ motivation was and was just present for Scarlet Witch’s incredible boobs and Captain America’s perky ass, and recollected himself with another sigh (two). “Why do you think Koutarou and I are perfect?”

“Do I need to pull up Bokkun’s entire Instagram?”

Akaashi snorted. Atsumu was taken aback at how ugly it was. “Because _Instagram_ is the correct parameter for a person’s real life.”

“Are you saying Bokkun’s not actually happy with you?”

“Of course _not_ ,” Akaashi huffed. “But it’s not like we’re going to post our fights on social media.”

“You guys are like, fuckin’ soulmates,” Atsumu said. “Fuckin’ star-crossed, world-aligns for the two of you kind. I mean, how many high school relationships survive graduation?”

“We didn’t date in high school.”

“I know, but you were in love.”

His response didn’t come instantly. “We were,” he murmured, “but that’s only half of the story.”

“Oh,” Atsumu said, suddenly remembering the conversation he had with Bokuto in the locker room two and a half years ago. “The ghosting part.”

Akaashi smiled curtly. “How much did he tell you?”

“Not… much, now that I think about it,” he scratched the back of his head, worried suddenly that this was no-man’s-land, and Bokuto had betrayed Akaashi somewhat by divulging this story to Atsumu. 

Akaashi stood up and sat across from him. Atsumu was hit with déjà vu, stuck at the crossroads of a fight or a heart-to-heart. He really hoped it was not the latter. He’d have to punch himself after, and he didn’t want Akaashi to be present for the action. He’d be concerned, and he did not need that on top of everything else.

“That… really destroyed us both.”

Atsumu leaned forward. This display of vulnerability from Akaashi made him nervous, but even more nerve-wracking was imagining happy-go-lucky Bokuto destroying _something,_ much less his own boyfriend. The realization that he didn’t know Bokuto beyond surface-level settled in his stomach like lead. “How…” he cleared his throat. “How did you come back from it?”

“A fuck ton of talking and effort,” Akaashi said frankly. “A lot of time and healing, but mostly talking.”

Atsumu narrowed his eyes.

“Yeah, I know,” Akaashi grinned, folding his arms, “not sexy at all.”

“Huh,” Atsumu said. “I thought you’d say something like, _our love prevails_ or something equally preachy.”

“I bet you did,” Akaashi agreed, tilting his head like he knew what Atsumu was really asking about. Atsumu wished for less emotionally perceiving people in his life. “I used to think like that, too. That if you just love something enough, you can make it better all on your own.” Like watering the succulents when the soil was bone-dry, Atsumu thought. A little extra attention when it mattered. “It takes two to tango.”

 _And other cliches my boyfriend’s mentor’s husband told me,_ Atsumu wanted to retort but didn’t. Maybe he didn’t need to be so spiteful, sometimes. Another profile video aired on the television, and a shock of red-orange hair filled the screen, followed by a megawatt smile. _Hinata Shouyou,_ the telecaster announced, _spent two formative years on the harsh beaches of Rio, Brazil as the esteemed Ninja Shouyou before he returned to Japan with the Black Jackals…_

“Do you like face masks,” Atsumu said, because it was easier than confronting the fact that maybe, _maybe_ lying about how he felt was not the same as pulling his own weight or the worry that it might be too late, for him. Akaashi said they were nearly destroyed before, but even then they had the foundation of love working for them. What did he and Hinata have? A decade-old promise, separated by a net? He couldn’t play volleyball. He wasn’t the most fun Hinata had playing volleyball. He didn’t want to entertain the possibility that he might not be enough, so—face masks.

Akaashi, to his credit, took this all in stride. “If they’re not innisfree I don’t want them.”

“I have the special edition ones.”

“With the animal prints?”

“Yeah,” Atsumu said, daring Akaashi to accuse him for being a furry. He liked the animal prints. They’re adorable, okay? A man can like adorable things and he can like it because his boyfriend maybe once said it looked cute on him and said man loved his boyfriend so much he had to lie down sometimes. 

But Akaashi just nodded seriously. “... dibs on the owl.”


	2. Shouyou (then Atsumu, then together)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the timeline of hinata's pov overlaps with a lot of events in [have my sympathy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24909823/chapters/60278257), so i would suggest reading that first!
> 
> EDIT 9/12/21: many commenters have informed me that apparently são paolo is a landlocked state so please assume in this universe it somehow has access to the beach. i got too excited to explore bodies of water imagery and forgot to fact-check. this is my fault and i am sorry!

The size and location of the Tokyo apartment were a few of the definite things that fell under the heading of 'things he could never afford if he wasn't a high-paying volleyball athlete’ in Shouyou’s growing list of privileges. Housing was provided by the national volleyball association while the team was training in Tokyo before the games, a modest studio apartment with a balcony overlooking the busy streets in Akasaka, but it was not mandatory. 

Shouyou, back from Brazil since April after a relatively successful debut with ASAS São Paolo, suggested to Atsumu that they rent a place of their own. It would hardly be out of the ordinary; Sakusa and Komori, both Tokyo natives, chose to stay in their childhood homes, as did Bokuto, though in his case, it was Akaashi’s spacious two-bedroom apartment. He received the vacancy info from an uncle’s friend’s husband, referred to him by his mother, who was growing anxious about the status of his living arrangement with his long-term boyfriend. 

(“It’s not good,” his mother said hushedly, “to leave for such a long time after you moved in together. He might develop doubts about marrying you!”)

He brought it up with Atsumu as the latter picked him up from the airport. “My mom’s contact said we could stop by before lunch, so I was thinking we could check it out,” he explained. Atsumu pondered this as he reversed out of the parking lot, one arm stretched over the headrest of his seat. Shouyou revelled in the pleasure of being treated to the sight of his biceps again in person after so many months of being deprived, and almost forgot his train of thoughts when Atsumu said, "It better have two bedrooms."

His head snapped up.

"To protect yer mother's delicate sensibilities," Atsumu said. "C’mon, yer mom already thinks me a bad influence, we should try ta keep a chaste image at the very least!"

He was just teasing, accidentally mean in a way that Shouyou knew he only partly intended. An attempt to return to the easy familiarity lost over the distance, maybe. Shouyou had dealt with distance long before this; with his past flings—Oikawa—he was used to getting acquainted and re-acquainted with varying levels of proximity, but this was Atsumu’s first time coming off a long-distance relationship. It had to take a little time getting used to having Shouyou’s presence again, living and breathing in the same time zone. Momentarily, he was worried he’d made a selfish offer; perhaps Atsumu needed some time to recuperate, get his bearings back, but Shouyou couldn’t wait. He missed Atsumu too much.

"Chaste?" he raised his eyebrows skeptically. " _Us?"_

"She can at least pretend we're maintaining our purity before marriage!"

"Atsumu, the apartment in Osaka only has _one_ bedroom." 

Because it started off as Atsumu’s; a purchase of his own subsidized with a portion of his inherited savings (he could hear his mother somewhere in Karasuno, yapping happily about his son marrying into wealth), until Shouyou asked for a spare key and he’d given it, no conditions. If it was up to Shouyou, he’d fly out to Osaka instead, spend two whole days in bed relearning each other’s bodies with Atsumu; as it were, training camp had already started, and the coach wanted him for conditioning immediately. 

"Well, we have the option now, don't we?” Atsumu said. “Help me out here, Shouyou-kun. I'm tryna win over her heart."

"She already likes you!" Shouyou laughed. 

"Nah, yer jus' sayin' things now to make me feel better," Atsumu said.

"You come to Natsu's games," Shouyou looked at him pointedly, "in _Miyagi._ That makes you part of my family already."

Atsumu faltered, his hands tightening around the steering wheel. Shouyou knew he didn’t spring this out of nowhere—Atsumu should know that by now, what with him and Natsu being on a first name basis and their mothers sharing family recipes on bi-weekly gossip sessions. Hell, he just called Osamu less than twenty four hours ago and they wound up ranting for half an hour about Latin America politics, and that wasn’t even _why_ he called him. There was something in Atsumu that refused to believe how much Shouyou meant to him and the people he loved, and he feared it only got worse with the distance.

"Whatever you say, Shouyou-kun."

Shouyou bit his lip. He stared at the rear-view mirror, at the cars wheeling behind them at a constant velocity, the yellow markers on the side of the road all blurring into one long line. He recalled the phone call with Osamu. He stared at his twin, this stubborn being with a heart-of-gold just refusing to be found out, and sighed inwardly. 

*

The apartment _did_ have two bedrooms, as it turned out. His uncle’s friend’s husband had given them a full two hours to look the apartment over, and they exploited it to examine every corner of the area.

The master bedroom was bigger, but the guest bedroom had a better view of the marine park five minutes away, the gray-blue water rippling shiny under the midday sun. One look at Atsumu, and Shouyou knew he could read his mind. Since he quit beach volleyball, he always tried to find a way to include bodies of water into his everyday life like a tether to home. Heitor said once the water was where all life derived from, and he hadn’t really stopped thinking about it ever since. Water was like rebirth, some poetry in the same language as being born from the concrete, and too-small bed be damned, they’d figure out the mechanics of squeezing two full-grown athletes into a queen-sized bed later. 

His own apartment in São Paulo was beach-fronted. He always sent Atsumu selfies of himself sitting cross-legged on the balcony, munching on granola bars and ripe bananas. The sunrise in São Paulo was prettier than in Osaka, as he always told Atsumu _._ It was a recurring theme in their long distance conversations, the comparison between Japan and Brazil. His life here, with Atsumu, and one in Brazil. His two homes together. Wistfully, he stared out the window and imagined them in some beach resort, watching the sun ripple over the ocean. “Man, this reminded me of São Paulo.”

“It’s a former shipyard, you know,” Atsumu said, craning his head at the direction of the window. “Not a river, you can’t swim in there.” He joined Hinata on the bed, pushing gently at his body until Shouyou gave and scooted over. He wondered if they were allowed to cuddle on their first viewing, if his uncle’s friend’s husband only offered the two-bedroom apartment under the wrong impression that they were both bachelors. He’d been all too enthusiastic to let two Olympians stay at his property for as long as they needed, provided that they bring home the gold medal. And they would; Shouyou had plans, and it involved all that and more.

“We should go to Rio for vacation, meet Heitor and Nice,” Shouyou said. “I think you would love it there.”

Atsumu's answer came a beat too long that Shouyou began to wonder if the unfamiliarity he found in Atsumu's gestures were a thing that ran deeper. Was he making up problems out of his own anxieties? The long-distance portion of their relationship was no smooth-sailing, but they'd fought much less during the weeks leading up to Shouyou's return. Atsumu smiled more. Was there a sign that Shouyou failed to pick up on? A new tell he couldn't decipher?

He should say something. The bubble they were surrounded by felt like seconds away from popping, but Atsumu smirked, juvenile and delinquent, nudged his neck with the tip of his nose and said, "Sure, as long as I get to see you in those tiny little Speedos," in a voice so playful and smarmy that it startled an ugly snort out of him. It felt so much like normalcy that Shouyou decided to let it go. 

He wondered if that was where he went wrong.

*

At the beginning of 2019, when winter was the heaviest, Shouyou asked Atsumu to come with him to Miyagi. If Atsumu was willing, he had said, he'd be happy to host him for the holidays in his childhood home. 

The full implication of his invitation didn't sink in until he saw Atsumu, mouth slack and seemingly at a loss for words, nod his head slowly. He cleared his throat, looked away in an attempt to salvage his facade, and said with as much composure as he could gather, "Sure." 

He blushed more easily compared to Shouyou. As such, the dusting of pink along his cheeks was visible under the afternoon sun filtering through the blinds, glowing something magic. Shouyou felt warm all over with it, even as his own heart thumped in an irregular pattern at the embarrassment of asking something so intimate out of Atsumu. It shouldn't be, was the thing—though their relationship still hovered over that amorphous stage where he still questioned whether the offer was presented much too early, three months in, Shouyou had always had an inkling that they'd get there regardless. He knew as soon as he kissed Atsumu that, much like volleyball, this was never going to be an idle, fleeting thing. They were both too dedicated for this to just be a fling. So when his mother called and tentatively asked if he was seeing anyone, Shouyou had said yes. One thing led to another, and he now had a very eager mother and a nosy sister expecting one Miya Atsumu at home. Shouyou couldn't just not ask him.

"Sure?" Shouyou had said, teasing. 

Atsumu had pouted. He would deny doing this, but there was no other word for the way his lips jutted out, miffed like a little kid caught red-handed with his hand down the cookie jar. "Do you want me to spell yes on a billboard, Shouyou-kun," he grumbled.

Shouyou laughed, good-naturedly. He loved the way Atsumu made him laugh, even when he didn't mean to. 

Shouyou had come to think about Atsumu in contradictions. He was an open book, yet he guarded himself so closely. He was confident, Narcissus himself on some days, yet he held within himself a deep insecurity that he couldn't begin to pick apart on some days. He loved Shouyou so much, yet he refused to be loved outright, withdrew to himself, only dared to look at him from afar as if he was a movie that made him cry. 

Here was a misconception: in this relationship, Atsumu was the difficult one. Their friends joked and jested, _hey, Atsumu, how did you get Shouyou to agree to date a jerkface like you?_

 _Fuck off,_ Atsumu always said, scowling, and he'd get his hair—his precious hair, which cost about three-thousand yen a month to maintain—ruffled good-naturedly, to let him know that whoever it was that said those words, they didn't mean it. Atsumu would get pissed, but he wouldn't stay that way for too long. He would say he didn't care, act like it, and when they were alone, he'd kiss Shouyou like he was losing him and held on to him so tight until it felt like a brand on his skin, and whispered, in the sweetest of voices, _fuck me, Shouyou,_ and it would all make Shouyou think that perhaps, _perhaps_ Atsumu cared, just a little.

But it was easy, falling for Atsumu. Because this was Atsumu, who declared that he hated children but bought Meian's daughter those expensive tiny Adidas shoes for her birthday—which he remembered but Shouyou didn't—and reminded Shouyou when Nice was most likely going into labor, so he could call Heitor and wish him the best of prayers. This was Atsumu, who leaned over his seat just so he could have a better look at his photos from Heitor's wedding, who congratulated him on his first child, who conspicuously left Shouyou links for double-seated baby strollers that Heitor may have mentioned once in passing, when Shouyou called him on speaker phone.

This was Atsumu, who applied a seven-step Korean skincare routine at night and spent two hours styling his hair every morning but made Shouyou promise to _never_ tell a soul about it, because no one was supposed to see how hard he tried. Atsumu, who would, without a doubt, put his hand in Shouyou's back pocket in public just to make a point, but whisper his _I love you_ s like he was going to shatter if Shouyou said it back. Because Atsumu was direct about what he wanted, but he only said half of the things he meant, and it was up to Shouyou to dig until he could grasp the entirety of himself in his hands, spilling over until he could bathe himself in it. 

He made Shouyou want to share all of himself.

And that—that hadn't always been the case. For the longest time, with the steadiest relationship he'd had in his life, he'd always felt like he had to _earn_ it, every interaction, every hello and goodbye—if he wasn't on the same level, if he hadn't accomplished anything of value or equal, if his win counts didn't go up, he didn't deserve Kageyama. Why hang out on the weekends? He still sucked at receives, he should practice them instead. Why tell Kageyama about Rio? He was taking a gamble, a shot in the dark that could very well end tits up—it was better for him to be sure first, to know he was on equal standing. When he said _I'm here,_ it had to mean, _I earned my place here._ This was why he didn't meet up in Rio, despite Kageyama's request.

And in hindsight, that was probably what made them better off as friends. Kageyama changed his life just by being in it. There was no use downplaying his impact; his mark would always be a shadow over of the trajectory of his life, having spent the better part of his teenage years being one half of him, his identity so intertwined with that of Kageyama's that it took him a long, painful while to understand who he was—and who he could be—without him.

Oikawa said this was why they could never work, as strong as his desire to make it so had been. Sometimes, in love, there came a point where you loved them too much to stay in love. And if they were fated, they should've been together by now; by the time Shouyou landed in Japan, Kageyama should've called, should've been there at Arrivals instead of Yamaguchi.

After the Sendai match, Kageyama had tapped the inside of his wrist and asked him if he needed a ride to the hotel, and if they were some kind of predestined lovers, they would've kissed in the taxi, but instead, the raging forest fire that they once were dimmed into a warm, steady flame.

"We're both stupid, huh," Kageyama had said in the taxi. They sat next to each other in the passenger's seat. Their hands were not touching, but rested on the leather, just a space of a kiss away. If they wanted their pinky fingers to touch, all they had to do was move.

But they knew it wouldn't be wise to.

Shouyou had to confront the possibility that maybe, _maybe_ it wasn't that Kageyama was too high to reach. Maybe it was him who positioned him that way. Maybe, maybe, if they had just talked, Kageyama would drop both of them off at a hotel, instead of awkwardly explaining to the driver that, yes, the two destinations were too far away from each other, but make the pit stop anyway.

Maybe he shouldn't have felt like he should earn love. Maybe, some of it was his fault too. 

"I made more sense at least," Shouyou had replied. "I could hide going to Rio. But you? In the V.League? How the hell do you think I could miss that?"

"That is not comparable in any way, idiot!"

"I'm surprised you learned how to use 'comparable' in a sentence correctly, Kageyama-kun!"

"Shut up, you human tangerine."

And it would be so easy, so, so easy to lean on his shoulder and tell him about all the boys he'd kissed in Brazil just because their eyes reminded him of his, all the girls with the plump lips, and confess to him that no one kissed him like he did. But they were sixteen and angry and scared, and it had been more like a smash of lips than anything else, and they didn't know how to make sense of the big, all-consuming feelings in the back of their ribs. 

They were older now. Shouyou would like to think that they knew better.

"You're still the most fun I've had playing volleyball," Shouyou told him earnestly.

Kageyama didn't say anything for a long time. He was like Atsumu a lot in that sense—his eyes said more than his words could mean. 

"You too," Kageyama had allowed, at the end. Then he was quiet again. He was thinking, Shouyou could tell. The signs were not that different than when he was fifteen: his brow furrowed, button nose upturned. "It would've been nice, though," he had added, and Shouyou held his breath. "My grandfather said if one day, I get really, really good at volleyball, someone even better will come and find me." He paused, his gaze more honest than Shouyou had ever seen him. "I'm glad you found me when you did."

It was so rare, so rare to hear Kageyama talk openly like this. The intimacy of it all almost tricked him into giving in, take him by the lips and seal their fate forever. Nothing he'd ever come up with in reply would hold half as much weight as his words did, so he simply told him, "Me too."

Because it indeed would've been nice. In another life, where Kageyama didn't have to push and Shouyou reached out a little more, he would ask to visit his grandparent's grave, pray over his name engraved on a stone and thank him, for making Kageyama less lonely, even just for a while. He could take Kageyama to re-meet Natsu, older and more ferocious now, with ambitions sky-high, and by nighttime, when it was too late to go home, maybe Shouyou would ask him to stay, and it'd be the right thing to ask of him. But that's not this life.

In this life, they both recognized that they'd run out of time. 

Unspooling between them was a thing too convoluted to untangle, and so, on that night, they both let go. Forgave each other. Wished each other well. At the entrance of his hotel, Shouyou got off, waving his friendliest, heaviest goodbye. Kageyama called out to him from the lowered window. Shouyou turned around.

Kageyama offered his fist. Shouyou met it with his own in kind, smiling.

The taxi drove away, and that had been that.

*

But it wasted Atsumu's honor to compare him to the one that got away.

In Karasuno, they had a mural up in the street where the electronic store Shouyou passed by as a child used to be. It had relocated to a new business district, closer to where Aoba Johsai was, and last he heard, the owner was doing well. Instead of glass windows, there was now a wall of brick, painted in the colors of Karasuno—black, white, and orange. Natsu said the volleyball club would pass it on the way to Tokyo—a four-meter tall depiction of man mid-flight, his wings as black as a crow's, sprouting out of his arms, outstretched behind his back. He was breaking free from the concrete, all unraveling underneath him, and the grey gradually gave way to soft, pearly sand. It looked like he was going for the sun, up above his head. Like he could outshine the sun and swallow it whole.

 _Ninja Shouyou_ , the words underneath proclaimed. _He who sprouted from concrete will fly higher than wings can take him!_

Apparently, it had become a tourist attraction.

There was a queue, tidy and organized, the people next in line helping to take pictures for the ones currently in front of the giant mural. February snow piled up at the bottom, obscuring the part of the mural that was supposed to depict the concrete of Karasuno. Even so, the excitement of the tourists wasn't at all dampened; with their selfie sticks and bendy tripods, they struck poses, holding up ten fingers after his old high school jersey number. 

Atsumu was the one to bug him for a visit to the mural. As early as ten am, he'd tackled Shouyou awake and announced to him they were going on a bike today. He had a whole itinerary printed out, folded in fours and kept in the breast pocket of his winter jacket. The first stop, he said, was the mural.

"Aren't I the Miyagi native?" Shouyou had said. "Shouldn't I be the one to show you around?"

"If the itinerary is up to you, Shouyou-kun, we'd stay in bed all day. And then your mom would think we're up to all sorts of unsavory things."

"Atsumu-san, aren't you the one who said last night that—"

"Breakfast!" Atsumu yelped, loud enough that Natsu next door complained in protest. Shouyou, giddy and drunk on this flustered Atsumu, snickered. "Breakfast is ready!"

"Atsumu-niichan, shut up!"

"Sorry, Natsu!"

What Atsumu didn't tell him was that it was on their mother's insistence that they visit the mural. Shouyou hadn't wanted to, not on his own. He didn't think he'd ever be ready to see himself as an idol, immortalized as some being exceeding human limits, when everything in his body had been a labor of habit since he was little. His jumps were high because he'd been biking up and down the mountain ever since he was four. He could spike as hard as he did because he spent two years working against the wind. He was not a god, he was just a product of grit.

But Atsumu, of course, didn't share his sentiment. When it was their turn to take pictures with the mural, in awe, he slung his arm over Shouyou's shoulders, pulling him crashing into his side. He planted a kiss on the crown of Shouyou's head, but it had an almost absentminded quality to it, like Atsumu did it just because.

"You're fuckin' insane, Shouyou-kun," he said. 

The person next in line cleared her throat. "Excuse me," she said politely, "do you want me to take the picture for you?"

Atsumu's eye twitched. It seemed she hadn't put two and two together, that the person she was rushing was the same person depicted in the art. Shouyou took control of the situation before Atsumu could do something rude and rash, and gave the woman his phone—cracked after he'd accidentally dropped it against the edge of the sink in the Jackals' communal apartment. 

"Please, we would be glad," Shouyou smiled.

The woman did a visible double take, and Shouyou prepared a public-appropriate pose for the camera, hoping to make this situation as painless as possible, but he could feel Atsumu puffing out his chest, smug beyond belief. _God_ , Shouyou thought, shaking his head fondly, _I love him._

Shouyou blinked just as the camera flashed.

"Ah, you closed your eyes!" the woman cooed. "I think we should take another picture!"

 _Oh,_ Shouyou thought. _Oh. Oh. I love him._

Shouyou's heart clenched in a way it had never before, and amongst the tourists eager to take pictures with the art, even on a snowy day, he burrowed himself deeper into Atsumu's side, his whole face hot with the realization.

_I love him._

*

It wasn't just lip-service when Shouyou told Atsumu that he thought about his declaration at the Spring Inter-High for a long, long time. 

Put yourself in his shoes. He was fifteen, sixteen in several months, and he'd swallowed his pride between the rubbery stench of gym mattresses in Shiratorizawa’s spotless broom closet, Ushijima’s words pricking at his skin like frostbite. He was a ball boy. He had no time to feel ashamed. Every crumb that fell in his way, he had to work twice harder for. He thought he’d scaled the wall and arrived at the summit when he spiked that last ball into Shiratorizawa’s court, but he couldn’t be more wrong. His partner, his rival, went on ahead. The wall continued to loom. 

He faced a legion of foxes at Nationals. One of them, the one with the sharpest teeth, said he did not want to play against losers, and he looked at Shouyou when he said it. Humiliation left his throat burning, his hands sweaty, his soul restless. He wanted to be better. He had to _prove_ that he was better, that he _mattered_ just as himself, that he could exist without the blinding shine of Kageyama’s genius talents. That he was whole alone.

He’d always thought he would always want things more than anyone else. Always starving, gobbling up more than he was allowed. He had no fear, for the only time he would fall into despair was the day he could no longer play volleyball, but there was a deep worry in him that one day, a time would come where he would ask for more, and no one would give it to him. Not because he asked for too much, but because he didn’t deserve to be the one asking. That there were more walls to climb, and he’d never live to see the other side. 

And then, at the end of a three-set match, marching bands and Japanese drums no longer deafening in his ears, the fox with the sharpest teeth pointed at him. With so much conviction, he delivered his ultimatum: _One day, I would set for you._

In the haze of exhaustion, Shouyou looked up at the fox through the net and couldn’t tell him apart from his twin. But later, after he showered and ate and sat sleepless, staring at his bruising forearms, he thought about the words again: _one day, I would set for you._

There was an intent. Spoken like a fact, like he was so sure that there would come a day where Shouyou would walk on court and demand of him the best tosses, a freak quick, like the one he’d replicated so effortlessly, faster than the speed of light. There was a want. 

It was proof that it didn’t matter how much Hinata hungered, there would always be someone who could—and would—meet him where he was. 

Three years later, alone in the corner of his bare room in Rio, nibbling on fish skin chips Yachi put in his homesick care package, he thought about giving up. There were texts from a past rival that he ignored, rotting under unread messages. What good would it do, to let Kageyama see him like this? A delivery boy of nineteen, stuttering in broken Portuguese?

But someone was waiting for him, he thought. He was no stranger to declarations of war; he’d had one of his own when he was a defeated middle schooler, wailing over his first and last game, on the steps of the Sendai gymnasium. To make good of promises, it would take two. 

This was no time to let up, Shouyou thought. Someone was waiting for him. Miya Atsumu laid for him the steps, and it was up to Shouyou to climb up. He must begin anew at the bottom. 

It was not providence that led him to the Black Jackals. He carefully planned it. 

And it went, exactly the way he wanted it, when he stepped onto the court and saw that Miya Atsumu still smiled the same, full of teeth and sleazy, leaning on the railing like he dared Shouyou to slack off.

Miya Atsumu wanted him. 

He didn't hide his desires. When Shouyou received his jersey on the first training day, Atsumu had turned to him in the locker room and said, "Nice of you to finally show up."

He waited on him for seven years. A player of many flaws, taken down not two matches later with a doom of his own creation, a practical nobody he put nothing but his faith on. He hadn't known what to say; a part of his brain had convinced himself that there was no way Atsumu would've remembered—fifteen and sixteen and still nothing to say about the cogs of the universe working against them—and taking in first-hand the fact that Atsumu held on to his declaration as much as he did with surefire confidence, Shouyou felt oddly... _special_. 

In his silence, Atsumu had assumed the worst, and his smile turned greasy and rotten. "Shouyou-kun," he said petulantly, "don't tell me you've forgotten."

A puff of breath escaped out of Shouyou's lips. He was so delightfully surprised. "Of course not," he said, incredulous. "You think you could make the quick faster?"

"That depends," Atsumu shot back, all cocksure and full of challenge, "can you keep up with me?"

There was something else implied in there, playful flirting with an edge of obscenity. Shouyou was not unfamiliar with lust; though far from vain, he could appreciate the way that he looked now with the extra pounds of muscle he'd put on and his bronzed skin. He wasn't a stranger to attraction, with a few notches of his own on his Brazilian bedpost, even eager to play along, see to it until whatever it was that made the glint in Atsumu's eyes so dark pass, his hunger momentarily quenched. 

He realized it wasn't just lust when Atsumu didn't make a move. Oh, he flirted, shamelessly open and obvious, going out of his way to spend more time with him under the guise of practicing his sets— _I'd make 'em so easy to hit, Shouyou-kun, so hit it hard, okay?_ —and Shouyou, more mischievous than anyone gave him credit for, accommodated him in turn. On night outs, he'd lean too much into Atsumu's space while he drank, showing off just how much alcohol he could stand, goad Atsumu into joining him for karaoke, purposefully move his hips in motions that he knew would send his mind straight to the gutter, follow him out onto the balcony, thinking now that they were alone, maybe Atsumu would kiss him. Back him up against the railing and try to take control. Instead, they talked. Aimless pleasantries, nothing of importance. 

And it was… pleasant. Good. Something he didn’t feel with all of his past entanglements. He didn’t want it to end.

Shouyou commented on how cold it was, because he was this close to asking Atsumu if he wanted to get out of here and fuck his brains out. Except. _Except_ , he glanced sideways, caught the way Atsumu was looking at him, and it dawned on him: Atsumu _liked_ him. 

It had been a long time since he felt younger than he actually was. The wounds on his past had long since healed and scabbed over, but he wasn't in the habit of indulging in nostalgia. That night at the balcony, he was transported into the body of a twelve year old child who didn't know anything about greatness, passing by on an unassuming day in front of an electronic shop with tall, squeaky-clean windows, not yet aware of the gravity of this moment. He saw volleyball for the first time, and in his heart, he knew he had to take his chance.

(What if it had been basketball? What if the little giant was a point guard instead of a wing spiker? Would life have taken him all the way to the coarse bed of sand in Brazil, falling and falling and getting up again and again? Would life have led him to Kageyama, to Karasuno? To here, on a balcony looking over Osaka's busy night, right next to the man who devoted seven years just to wait for him? Would Atsumu have met him, loved him at all?

And Atsumu thought _he_ was interfering with fate. No damn way.)

There, an opportunity. Shouyou could walk away, make excuses to himself about how he wasn't ready. He just let go of Kageyama; there was no rush for him to immediately jump into another relationship, in a dynamic so reminiscent of his old one—spiker and setter—no less. He wasn't equipped with the tools to make this work. He wouldn't know the first thing about keeping a relationship when everything up to this point had all been fleeting connections, intense as they were.

("I think a part of you would always want to fly away, Shouyou," he remembered Oikawa saying. "I get that. It's scary to be so firmly rooted to one place, right? 'Cause where do you go from there?")

But Shouyou understood devotion the way he understood the overlapping lines on his palm. It woke him up earlier than the roosters outside his bedroom for a jog around the winding slopes of his neighborhood, snuck him into places he wasn't supposed to be privy to, took him on a 30-hour flight to a strange place with a strange language with strange, lovely people. It sharpened his gaze and narrowed his landscape so he could only focus on one feeling: a ball, flush against his reddened hand, bouncing off the opponent's side. 

This was no different than the rush of seeing the Little Giant soar up the ceiling, fleeing back home to ask his mother if she could buy him a volleyball because he just _had_ to try. He spared another look at Miya Atsumu, the hard planes of his body and his skin kissed by silvery moonlight, and knew that he had to take his chance.

So he did. 

*

After the mural visit and two hot buns from Sakanoshita, they rode their bicycles up the mountains to make it in time for Shouyou’s mother’s special dinner. Their breaths were coming out in puffs, their cheeks pink with the cold. Here, in the trails that he could recall with his eyes closed, it felt like the snow fell in slow-motion. Like if Shouyou stopped to catch a snowflake in his gloved hands, it wouldn’t melt immediately against his body heat, and he could admire the perfect symmetry of the hexagons, the dendrites facing outwards. It made Shouyou want to waste time, tell Atsumu to stop cycling so they both could lie here in the middle of the snowy road, and ask him if he agreed that from this angle, Mount Funagata looked like the hull of a boat, or if he wanted to watch the snowstorm that was sure to come in a few days create monsters on the top of the mountain.

“This is kinda like home,” Atsumu said in between pants. “Hyogo’s surrounded by mountains too.”

Shouyou asked if he rode to school as well. Atsumu shook his head no; he lived too far from Inarizaki, so he took a bus to and from school. Shouyou asked him if he would race Osamu to the bus stop, and Atsumu laughed, open and honest, and said, _obviously._

His mouth was moving. His mind, though, was stuck on that word. _Home._

"Wait," Atsumu said suddenly. "We should visit a shrine."

"It's almost dark," Shouyou said. "Also, we already went for New Year's."

"Why, just because it's dark the gods ain't listenin' to prayers no more?" 

"Well, the shrine might be closed."

"Gods don't sleep."

If Shouyou wanted to argue, he would. He never took comfort in the existence of gods, praying to follow a tradition more than out of devotion. In Rio, he used to follow Heitor to Sunday services, sitting in the pews though he believed in not one single thing; he was more comforted by the sense of community, the warmth of acceptance and affirmation. In shrines, though there were usually people milling around, his prayers were an individual thing, a confrontation between him and the gods. 

The shrine in Karasuno was situated on top of a hill. Two kitsune statues greeted them at the entrance, adorned with patterned yodarekakes, holding a key between their teeth, flanking the vermilion torii that his mother said had stood there long before time. An ancient little thing paving the way to the heavens. They parked their bicycles on the bottom of the hill. As Shouyou predicted, the shrine was practically deserted, the only other person being a maintenance staff who seemed indifferent to the world's existence at large, much less two men holding hands as they ascended up the steep steps. 

They gave their offerings. They bowed. They clapped their hands twice. Atsumu closed his eyes and prayed. Shouyou was left staring at him.

Look at him, Shouyou thought. Look at the slope of his nose, the curve of his cupid’s bow, the sharpness at his decolletage, hidden under a high, wool collar. His hands, smooth and big when they ran over the skin at the dip of his waist, his soft, vermilion mouth, the cord of muscles straining as Shouyou bent him over and took everything he could give. This man was a modern Adonis, he thought; why would he want to make prayers to invisible deities when there was one just within his reach? He was more stunning than Joseph, the stretch of his throat more sinful than the bite of Eve's apple. He hosted the garden of Eden himself in the expanse of his torso, in the world between his thighs. Why should Shouyou pray? This god of a man wanted him. He believed in him so much that if he was Orpheus, and Shouyou Eurydice, he would not have looked back. What else could Shouyou pray for?

Look at Miya Atsumu.

How could he not want him back?

*

He was standing in front of the frozen food selection at Camdenfood.co in Hamid International Airport, his connecting flight to Narita hours away, disoriented and oily from fourteen hours stuck in a humid tin can, when he noticed Atsumu’s favorite brand of yogurt and thought, _I should call Osamu now._

He wasn’t sure what he was looking for—blessing? Not really; if Osamu had any objection regarding their relationship, he would’ve said it by now. He would’ve said it six months ago, when Hinata moved back to Brazil, would’ve told Atsumu to get out, two and a half years ago, when Atsumu took a family-appropriate selfie of the two of them after their first night together, and sent it to Osamu as proof. 

(“Proof of what?” Hinata had asked, amused and warm, so warm in the right side of Atsumu’s bed in Osaka.

“That he’s _so_ wrong,” Atsumu answered, but offered no further explanation.)

Still, it didn’t feel right not to share this with Osamu, who had witnessed and been a part of Atsumu’s many milestones since birth. When the time came for Hinata to actually ask the question, he would be twelve hours ahead of Boston local time; it was only right that he let Osamu know in advance.

So he called Osamu, two am Doha time, seven pm Boston time, and laid it all out on the line.

There was no surprise on Osamu's behalf, almost like he had been waiting for this since he was formally re-introduced to Shouyou, post-game in Sendai. “Well, damn,” he said. “I lost.”

“I wasn’t aware there was a competition.”

“It’s a whole thing, you wouldn’t know about it. We only have one heirloom ring left ‘cause our idiot dad took the other one so our mom was like, ‘Well, whoever proposes first gets the ring!’—and anyway, he’s probably going to ask for the ring soon ‘cause he’s gonna want you to have it and—” Osamu sighed, long-sufferingly. Shouyou could imagine him rubbing a hand down his face. “This is going to make him so insufferable, isn’t it? He’s always gonna rub it in my face.”

He sounded so pissed, but even static through the phone, he could pick up on the lack of malice, the fondness that instead dripped from every word. Shouyou could imagine how Osamu would be smiling: faint, rather incredulous, but loving all the same. He wondered if he should tell Osamu about the number eleven on Atsumu’s jersey, or watch his resolve unfold in real-time when he saw it for the first time on Atsumu’s person. 

“You got the ring?” 

He’d purchased the ring after seeing a jewelry ad pop out even after he’d installed an ad-blocker on his laptop and thought, _if this isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is._ It was a sleek, pretty thing, a simple carved gold band with a tiny peekaboo white diamond in the center. Conspicuous enough to be worn without raising too many questions, compact enough to be kept around a necklace, when Atsumu needed his hands to set.

He would propose with an heirloom ring, if he had one, but his family had never been well-off enough to be the type who passed down inherited jewelry. When his father proposed, his mother said they had next to nothing to their names, and chose instead to tattoo little hearts in their ring fingers until they could scrape enough money to buy matching wedding bands. He hadn’t thought to buy one for himself, and he blushed thinking about the Miyas’ heirloom ring around his own finger. _Miya Shouyou. Hinata Atsumu._ Yeah, he was going to explode in front of yogurt boxes just picturing it.

He thumbed the inside pocket of his bomber jacket, where he’d been keeping the velvety box close to his heartbeat since the plane took off from GRU, a timezone ago. “Yeah.” Shouyou hesitated. Then, “Six months after we started dating.”

Six months after their first kiss, three months after the Miyagi visit, two months after they moved in. 

“ _Six_ _months_ —” Osamu cursed. “Shouyou-kun, promise me that there ain’t no way you’ll ever breathe a word of this to Atsumu, aight? We’d never live it down otherwise. He’s going to be so smug, and it’ll all be your fault.”

Hinata laughed. “I could live with that.”

“You sure, Shouyou? You say that now, but wait ‘til you actually propose. That motherfucker’s not gonna be able to fit his head anywhere, ‘cause it’ll grow twice the size of his body,” Osamu said. 

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt my ego.”

“Oh god,” Osamu said, something horrified in his voice. “You actually won’t mind it, will ya? Yer just gonna enable him? Fuck, you two really deserve each other.”

 _Miya Shouyou. Hinata Atsumu._ He stared at the yogurt selection and picked up Atsumu’s favorite. _God, he hoped so,_ he thought.

"Wait, so you bought it six months after you started dating—that's almost, what, two years ago? What's stoppin' ya from asking all along?" Osamu said. "Ya know my brother's gone for ya. He would've said yes even if ya ask him to bury Elon Musk alive."

"Just waiting for the right moment," Shouyou said. "I thought I'd ask him after we win the Olympic gold." He moved to the sandwich aisle. He selected a tuna sandwich. 

"Shit, that's a proposal story no one will ever get to top. Yer gonna give Suna an' me an inferiority complex unless I manage to, like, shut down the entire Skytree to propose to him," Osamu said. 

"Um," Shouyou blinked, staring at the sandwich wrapper in his hand and thinking about their first date, the failed trip to Kyubey that ended with them strolling around a quiet neighborhood near Imperial Hotel, sharing a konbini tuna sandwich in their fancy suits. "I'm sorry?"

"... you're way too earnest, Shouyou-kun.”

 _I really wanted you to try the fatty tuna, Shouyou-kun,_ Atsumu had said miserably, _sorry I got you all dressed up only to get the reservation date wrong._

 _When I’m back in Japan, I’m gonna take him to dinner there,_ Shouyou thought, _I’ll get him all the fatty tuna he wants._

“Anyway, so you're back with the Jackals now?"

Shouyou snapped out of his reverie. The lone cashier behind the counter was staring at him with deep suspicion. He realized he probably looked strange, reminiscing on first dates, all lovestruck in the sandwich aisle. He sheepishly made his way to the counter. 

"What do you mean?” he asked, cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he pulled out his wallet. _“How much?”_ he asked in Arabic—what little he could learn while bored to death on a fourteen-hour flight, anyway. The cashier raised her eyebrows, and answered in perfect English, “ _Thirty seven dollars.”_

"Yeah, 'cause you're moving back to Japan?"

"I am—” he hastily grabbed his food, cheeks reddening in embarrassment, wanting to get far away as soon as possible from the cashier’s judgey eyes, “—not?”

A pause. "So you're just going back to Japan for the Olympics?"

"Yeah," Shouyou said, confused as to where this assumption could've come from. 

"... you're staying in Brazil?"

"At least for the time being. I'm still not sure if ASAS wants to take me in personally but I think I've got a pretty good shot at it."

Another pause. Osamu tried again, "So if Tsumu says yes—let's not kid ourselves, he _will_ say yes—you're going to have a… long-distance marriage." 

"Yeah?"

"Cool, cool, cool."

Shouyou had a feeling that Osamu wasn't so _cool_ with that.

"Is… there a problem?"

Osamu cleared his throat. A beat too long, he replied, "I am not going to tell you how to live your marriage—ain't like Tsumu to listen to me, anyways—but, uh, you sure my brother can handle that?" Shouyou opened his mouth, but Osamu interjected impatiently with, “Like, are you _100%_ absolutely sure?”

 _Well, of course,_ he’d wanted to say. _This is Atsumu._ He’d never been more certain about anything in his life. He was more scared of flying out to Brazil after high school than to ask Atsumu to spend the rest of his life with him. But something about the tone in Osamu’s voice deterred him from it, and as he plopped down on an empty seat in the middle of the duty free plaza, he tried to think of the right response.

“Why wouldn’t he?” he said.

He’d posed the question as rhetorical, but Osamu had been ready with an answer anyway. “That’s a question you should ask him yourself,” he said, and left it at that.

*

“Oi, boke," Kageyama said with the most serious look on his face. “I cracked your stupid riddle.”

They were at the shuttle bus taking them to Ariake Arena. The television was showing the on-going baseball match between Mexico and South Korea. They tried asking the driver if he could change it to volleyball, but the system was apparently central and thus, he had no control over it. He looked up from his tablet—Brazil was in their last set, breezing through with a whopping ten-point difference—and squinted at his best friend. Seeing his forehead exposed still took some serious getting used to.

“You actually used your head for thinking?” 

“Boke, do you want me to explain it to you or not?”

“How do I know it’s even the right answer?”

“Didn’t you say there’s no right or wrong answer?”

The riddle in question was none other than Atsumu’s cursed GMAT problem. The entire team was made aware of it via Bokuto’s babbling; he’d initially asked only his mentor, but it quickly spread around the National Team as everyone took it upon themselves to try to solve it. Shouyou had yet to infer whether their secret camaraderie towards Atsumu was to pin on for their interest in the subject, or they were just simply nosy, well-meaning people.

Nonetheless, they had never been more divided as when they were arguing on the right answer—though Shouyou had maintained there was no right or wrong, as this was an essay—that Iwaizumi had gotten involved. Funnily enough, he accidentally made it worse by mentioning said problem to Oikawa, and now the entire team was heated about something else entirely. 

“Fine,” Shouyou said. “Hit me.”

Kageyama took a deep breath. “Nothing.”

“What?”

“Nothing happened,” Kageyama insisted. “The entire village’s dysfunctional.”

“But the tourist already pointed out that each villager has either a red or a blue dot on their foreheads,” Shouyou rebutted. "Wouldn't they be aware already of who has which color?"

"That's assuming that the tourist stays long enough to tell them all that. But the problem set didn’t give us that information." 

A head of silvery spiked hair appeared in front of them. Hoshiumi rested his chin against the top of his seat and asked, "Are you guys talking about The Village Problem?" 

"Ooh, are you?" Yaku from across the aisle perked up. "'Cause I discussed it with Kuroo—you know, seeing as a corporate sellout he'd be the only person to have done GMATs—and he said that you should answer based on how the company wants you to act."

"Yeah, but how would we know what the company wants?" Komori joined in, looking over Sakusa's shoulder at them. 

"You would've done research first on them, right? Like based on their values. If the company wants someone who's proactive and always willing to take the initiative, you should say that the villagers with the red dots all leave the village," Yaku said. 

"But they wouldn't know who has the red dots. How would they figure this out once the tourist leaves?" Hoshiumi pinched his chin between two fingers. "You know what, I agree with Kageyama."

"But why nothing at all?" Shouyou asked out loud. "What's the point of having all those rules if they were going to just—do nothing? Wouldn't they forever be at a standstill?"

"Ugh, this is making my brain hurt," complained Aran. "Why is Atsumu looking up GMAT questions again?"

The realization didn't hit him like a crack of thunder. Instead, he tipped his head against the window, sighing as the argument continued on around him, and thought, _God, I wish I knew._

 _But have you asked?_ A little voice said that sounded concerningly like Oikawa said. Shouyou stiffened his shoulders, thinking, _What, I don't need to, it's clear that he's having some kind of crisis_ —

"That's making too many assumptions," Kageyama was saying. "Unless we have solid information on to what extent the tourist revealed what he knows, we cannot say for sure that the tourist stays long enough to pick the red dots apart from the blue."

_Yeah, you assumed, didn't you?_

The thing was, Shouyou had never been happier than when he was with Atsumu. He might have fallen first, but Shouyou fell just as hard and fast after he allowed himself to. Atsumu stepped into this relationship with no brakes on; right from the beginning, he’d offered Shouyou his bloody, beating heart, and told Shouyou he could break it with his deathly incompetent hands. He hadn’t known what to do with the strength of his devotion, afraid he’d never meet him halfway, wind up hurting him the way Atsumu always seemed convinced he would. But peel away the hard shell, the assholery and the devil-may-care front, he found in Atsumu the core of himself—a vulnerable, loveable man beneath it all.

It was like a dream, getting up to do what he loved with the man he loved, in his Osaka apartment that always felt too warm in summer heat, watching over their little family of cacti by the window. He fell for how much he sucked at cooking, but still tried anyway, fell for the way he kept the first receipt from Onigiri Miya on the first day it opened in his wallet, next to an official headshot of Shouyou for the Black Jackals. He fell for the way Atsumu would walk into a room in a flurry and immediately forget what he wanted to do, the way he kept it from people that he loved watching rom-coms, just so he'd get to play the part of Casanova. How he melted when he called him _baby,_ how he could recite the entirety of Howl's Moving Castle with his eyes closed, down to the background music, and how he'd admit that he was afraid of becoming Howl, one day, reduced to obsession for superficial things like youth and beauty.

The decision to include Atsumu in his future plans wasn't a spur of the moment, impulsive thing. He thought about it, before the jewelry ads started popping up like weeds on the edge of his browser. _Can he see Atsumu? If he thinks about growing older, can he see Atsumu next to him?_ It was the addition of those little moments that made him so sure, but if he was asked how he knew, he'd tell the story of the night they spent watching Roman Holiday, and Atsumu had gone on such a long rant on Audrey Hepburn that some words became void of meaning to Shouyou's ears, but listened on anyway, completely enamored.

"I just think it's unfair," he remembered Atsumu saying, "that she's forever immortalized as this petite little thing. Have you seen her older than 30 years old?" Shouyou remembered shaking his head no. "Beyond her pretty face and her body—which, by the way, is the result of malnourishment thanks to the Nazis when she was just a teenager—she's barely even talked about. Heck, she was a humanitarian longer than she was an actress, but nobody talks about it 'cause she got wrinkles when she was doin' it. Doesn't that frustrate you? That you could spend your whole life trying to make the world better, but people would only remember you by the version of you that's palatable?"

If he held up a mirror to his face, he knew he'd look dumb in love. This version of Atsumu was a rare thing, he delighted in knowing. This version of Atsumu was comfortable with him, enough to kick off his socks, proceed to tell him every trivia and anecdote under the sun for all two hours of Roman Holiday, and crack a joke about how the scene where Princess Anne commanded the barber to cut her hair shorter was him in high school, demanding his mother to dye his hair blonde. When Atsumu looked at him, he must've identified something that made him blush and duck his head—could be the longing, awestruck look in his eyes—with an uncharacteristic shyness, and said, "Well, couldja _try_ to at least fake being interested, Shouyou-kun." Shouyou had scrambled into his lap with a laugh, tapped his stupidly soft cheeks and reassured him that if all Atsumu wanted to talk about all day was how riveting it was to watch paint dry, he'd be listening just as raptly.

"Even when you have wrinkles of your own," Shouyou had said, faster than his brain could catch up. And as he traced the corner of his eyes, where his laugh lines would be, his epiphany came to him breathlessly: he wanted to see Atsumu with wrinkles. When he no longer has need for hair dye and lets the black roots grow back, interspersed with soft strands of silver-white at his temples. And he wanted himself by Atsumu's side, older and softer too, spending whole nights just talking about movies and history. Atsumu had scoffed sulkily and pushed Shouyou off his lap so he could "appreciate the best part properly," and spent the rest of the night acting ineffably mundane, unaware of the grand plans that Shouyou started sketching mentally from that day on. 

Then he'd left for Brazil, and though Atsumu said he would kill him if he thought about declining the offer to stay with him (he didn't), something in their relationship turned brittle, then snapped. He couldn't pinpoint when it began. One day, Atsumu called, said he'd accidentally killed one their succulents, and Shouyou realized, _Something is wrong._ He made excuses not to approach it—they were long-distance, it was already hard enough to keep in touch, he didn't want the only time they got to talk turned into an arguing session, fighting with Atsumu was terrible and gut-wrenching and he'd rather die than deliberately cause it. So he thought: _once I'm in Japan._

But once in Japan, Shouyou thought, _the Olympics are so close. I don’t want to add unnecessary pressure._ He’d gotten overconfident, certain that if they forced themselves into the familiarity they’d left in Osaka hard enough, got up every day to do what they loved alongside each other, slept in the guest bedroom tangled up in each other, woke up loved and sated and in love, surely, they would be fine once again. Surely, they wouldn’t have to fix anything.

And then Atsumu had broken his leg, two weeks before, and he shuttered himself away so violently that Shouyou hadn't known what to do. He couldn't talk about it to Atsumu then. So close to realizing his life's biggest goal, it was wrenched so cruelly from him with just one mistake. He wouldn't inflict more pain on Atsumu,not when he was a living reminder of what he couldn't have. He wouldn't do that. But Atsumu was wrong to think he'd leave because of all that. Seeing Atsumu so vulnerable, suffering and so adamant to put up a composed front, it just made Shouyou want to love him better. 

_Then maybe, just maybe, shouldn’t you have told him all that?_

But how could he not know? He’d done so, so wrong. 

He shouldn't have snapped. He should've maintained his temper. Should've told him that he loved him as many times as it took until Atsumu believed in it. Should've stayed, slept next to him when he migrated to the master bedroom just to prove a point, and kissed him goodbye instead of succumbing to his silent treatment. Shouldn't have felt like Atsumu's ego was a thing he needed knocked down, and left with only a, "See you soon," at the door. Like the goddamn GMAT village, they had been unmoving since Brazil, and Shouyou had been too focused on his own future plan, his goal, that he just ploughed past everything else, another Kamomedai waiting to happen.

His eyes suddenly felt hot.

He missed Atsumu so much. He wanted to plant his lips on his stupidly kissable cheeks and smush them between his hands and tell him—

"Oi, why are you crying?"

"Shut up, Bakageyama, I'm _not_ crying!"

"Are you just now realizing, after so many years of being looked down upon because of your stature, you are now one of Japan's top players _because_ of it and have since then come so far?"

"Ushijima, I think that's making it worse…"

"Eh? Shouyou is crying?"

"Don't crowd him! You're all so bad at handling overwhelming emotional moments!"

A box of tissues was shoved in front of him. There were pats on his back, sympathetic. Someone cooed at him, most likely Bokuto. 

The ring sat heavy in a velvet box on the inside pocket of his red jacket.

"Oh, he's smiling again, it's all good, guys…"

"If you get too emotional and missed your serve—"

"You know what, Bakageyama? Just for that, I'm going to aim the serve right at the back of your head."

He blew his nose.

The shuttle halted to a stop in front of the Ariake Arena. There were spectators already crowding the entrance gate, diverse faces and a sea of colors, a few Japanese reds in between. Human-sized robots of the Olympic mascots, Miraitowa and Someity, walked about on auto-pilot, stopping on command to take selfies with or give information in over a hundred languages.

He had _so much_ he wanted to tell Atsumu. He hoped he hadn’t run out of time. 

But first, the fundamental leg of his plan: he had to win gold first.

“Right,” he got up, determined. “Let’s go.”

*

**bestmiya**

[photo: Keiji and Atsumu in animal-print face masks, lounging in the Tokyo apartment while Atsumu holds a glass of wine, tongue out, Keiji glancing back uninterested. In the background, the television is captured playing the Olympics channel]

Liked by **OnigiriMiya** , **bettermiya** , and **2,113** others

 **bestmiya** stealing ur man @akaashi.koutarou

View all 710 comments 

**akaashi.keiji** Take this down.  
**akaashi.koutarou** KEIJIIIIIII WHAT R U DOING **😭😭😭😭😭😭😭  
** **y_akumori** press f to pay respects  
**kuro0tetsu** f  
**tsukishima_kei** f  
**sakukiyoo** f  
**k0dzuk_EN** f  
**yuu.dai** f (im sorry koutarou-san, gao threatened me)  
**officialhakubagao** f  
**kouraikourai** f  
**kageyama_t** f  
**motoyaaaa** ffffffff  
**UshijimaWakatoshiOfficial** f  
**aran0jirou** f (sorry koutarou!)  
**bestmiya** 😎🤙

*

 **ninjashouyou** **💓**

198 likes

*

**donot text unless dying**

wat r u doin on ig

u shld b warming up

I am

I just

Couldn’t stop thinking about our last fight

if ur gonna apologize

grow some balls and grovel to me in person

Baby :(

whatever im not falling for IT this time (message unsent)

i forgot abt it alrd

so you should just focus on winning gold

that’s more important than anything rn

Okay. I will.

But we’re talking after this. 

Please?

after u win gold

Deal.

ok

love you (message unsent)

good luck

Thank you.

I love you.

See you soon.

love you too (message unsent)

love u so fuckin much (message unsent)

so i read keiji’s book and honestly it’s too fuckin’ smart for me but  
he was citing a letter from this american founding dude to his other 

dude friend and he was like “you should not have taken advantage  
of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent” 

and i was like wtf that’s so gay haha (message unsent)

how the fuck are these dead american dudes so fuckin candid  
with their feelings like how did they do that. and apparently they  
were also all “no homo” abt it?? that’s so (message unsent) 

big sap

see u

*

For the finals—which Japan made it to, as Hinata promised—they were provided with complimentary VVIP access; Atsumu sat now at the special box up high in the stands, away from the regular spectators, among Volleyball Association officials—that scammer-looking guy, apparently a high school friend of both Akaashis—important sponsors—Atsumu kept his eyes straight on the Bouncing Ball CEO—vendors, and immediate family members. He was disappointed to find that Kita declined the ticket, instead choosing to watch the game from the comfort of his farm-side house with his grandma’s group of neighborhood aunties _,_ but that was probably more for his benefit. He’d probably bother Kita all day just so he wouldn’t have to face Hinata's mother—Matsuri—and Natsu, and no one would have a good time. 

As it were, Natsu sat next to him, sandwiched between her bags and Matsuri, clad head to toe in Japanese team regalia. The Hinata jersey, big on Natsu even in size S, was tied around her waist to mimic a crop top, and Atsumu had been overcome with the need to cover the eyes of every man in attendance. It seemed Matsuri shared the same sentiment, as she was repeatedly frowning and shoving a jacket in Natsu's direction, who scowled and looked none too pleased about ruining her fit. 

Akaashi—Keiji—sat on his other side, conversing with Bokuto's parents, probably about some boring topic like how the architecture of the arena was specifically designed to reduce the need for air conditioning and the remarkable solar and geothermal power generation system or something. Atsumu wouldn’t know. Like everyone on this side of the court, he was wearing red, though his jersey boasted his own name—AKAASHI, blazing white on his back. Atsumu wondered how that felt, to hear the entire country chanting your name like some kind of prayer.

Japan was facing Argentina. Atsumu had a lot of things to say about it, mostly about the elusive setter that may or may not have stolen Shouyou's virginity— _for the last time, Atsumu-san, Oikawa did_ not _steal anything_ —a former Japanese national who apparently had history with, like, four members of the National Team, including Iwaizumi. Watching him warm up made his leg ache. Who knew volleyball had so much drama?

(Speaking of, he never noticed how unfriendly architecture was towards disability until he had to walk up the steps with crutches by himself. Things he took for granted: number a hundred twenty seven.)

At the moment, Atsumu was trying to decide which emotion he was allowed to feel. He had about a thousand different kinds banging inside his head, as he expected, but the most damning thing that glowed red-hot in his heart was yearning. Yearning and pissed off. He didn't want to entertain thoughts of what-ifs and should've beens—his head was so full of those in the first four days, he felt so sick of himself—so he focused only on Shouyou, orange-red hair and a ball of kinetic energy on the court, eagerly leaping into Oikawa's arms for a very not-bro hug, and okay, that was _definitely_ too familiar—

Yep, he was definitely leaving Atsumu for that guy. That’s definitely what he wanted to talk to Atsumu about after the match. _Atsumu-san, I'm breaking up with you to be with this bombshell of a man. Sure you have more ass than Oikawa-san, but have you seen his natural tan? His perpetually tousled brown hair? Sorry you're not a match for him, in body and setting skills. Bye!_

Actually, no train of thoughts of his would be healthy while he was in the presence of his own Sisyphus. He was a fool to think he could face his inadequacies head-on. He should leave. He should—

"Atsumu-niichan, you okay?"

Atsumu blinked back into consciousness. Natsu was staring at him intently, her hand half-raised, like she couldn't be sure if touching him would scare him off like some ensnared woodland creature. He took in his surroundings and tried to level his head. 

One good thing. 

("Don't name the bad ones if there are too many," his mother had said. "Try to name one good thing, baby. Can you name one good thing?")

Fuck. Okay.

"Yeah," Atsumu answered. "Why, you need somethin'?"

Natsu's eyes were too much like Shouyou's. With her hair chin-length now, she was faultlessly the splitting image of her brother's high school self, just a few centimeters shorter. "I was actually going to ask if you could watch my bag for me while I go to the bathroom," she said. "But you look pale."

"Well, I haven't been out in the sun for almost two weeks now. So."

"You should! Vitamin D helps the bones grow, you know?" Natsu elbowed his side, which, ow. She had so much strength in such a tiny package. "When you're all healed up, we should play a game together."

Atsumu smirked. "Like when I totally crushed you and three of your friends?"

"Not happening again this time! My receives are superior now," she grinned. "You're going down this time, Niichan."

The sunshine genes really favored the Hinatas, Atsumu mused. He settled back into his seat. One good thing: Hinata Natsu. 

"Okay," he said. "So, you and all three of your friends are gonna kick my ass in a game of… four versus one, huh? Very impressive."

"One Olympian equals four tiny high school girls."

Atsumu wasn't quick enough to hide his flinch. "Ah. That." He scratched the back of his head. “I’m not exactly—”

Natsu cut him off. "I meant the next one, Niichan."

A laugh escaped unwittingly out of his throat. "What?"

"Yeah, the 2024 Olympics."

So deadpan and factual about it, Atsumu had to squeeze his hands to stop himself from laughing hysterically. Here’s one of the many bad things: Natsu's conviction was unfortunately cut from the same cloth as Shouyou. Death of overexposure to optimism had to be a thing, right? Otherwise, what’s the name of this constricting feeling in his chest? The _next_ Olympics, like this injury of his was no different than rescheduling a dinner plan for next week. Like all he needed to do was make some calls, and all would be fine again. 

He'd be pushing thirty years old by then. There'd be newer seeds, fresh collegiate athletes eager to make their mark at the world stage. He’d be a second-string, at best, included out of pity. He felt nauseated just thinking about it. 

… but then, Nicolas Romero was thirty years old when he was drafted to Schweiden Adlers, and Mikhail Orlov, of the original hybrid serve fame, had just turned thirty one, and was playing outside hitter for the Russian National Team as a starter.

“You’re not gonna retire before I get to see you set Niichan’s quicks with my own eyes,” Natsu said it like an ultimatum. “I never got to go to Niichan’s games when he was still with the Jackals, so _you’re_ not making me miss my chance in the next Olympics. Okay?”

Damn the sunshine genes. He could actually _feel_ himself lifted up by her words. He hid his smile by looking away. 

“Okay,” he nodded.

*

The commentators weren’t used to referring to Bokuto as _Akaashi,_ and it showed. 

Though he supposed he was the last person who should complain about it, seeing as he still called him by _Bokkun_ even as everyone else started adopting _Koutarou._ It was obvious that the least painful route for everyone involved was for Akaashi—Keiji—to take Bokuto’s name, being the public figure between the two, but the pair had always loved defying expectations. In the end, the slip-up didn’t matter much, for every time Bokuto scored, without fail, he made it clear who he belonged to, pointing at the name on his back when the camera was on him. _Akaashi._ If Atsumu could ransack any definition in the dictionary, he’d put this exact face Keiji was pulling next to the word _besotted._ He had to be why the word was invented. 

Theatrics and Akaashi-induced—both of them—nausea aside, the game seemed to fly by in seconds. The pace was lightning-quick, Argentina’s offense ruthless against Japan’s hardwearing defense, a constant push and pull of strategy and dominance. Argentina was an overwhelming presence in the first two sets, Oikawa’s wicked serves repeatedly piercing through every crack in Japan’s defense, entirely untouched after Sakusa’s first and only fluke in the first set. The third set, Japan awoke like an ancient beast, the combined force of Kageyama and Japan’s best spikers—Bokuto, Ushijima, Hinata—proving too much for Argentina’s blockers, backed into a corner with a seven-point gap. 

And Shouyou was simply divine. Atsumu promised himself he wouldn't get too much into the game, some sort of self-preservation against longing to be the one setting for him, but when the crowd began cheering, half sitting up in anticipation as Shouyou took to serve, the other half standing at attention, he couldn't help but he pulled in the current. It wasn't like he forgot how magnetic Shouyou was, but in the thick of the game, with the stakes as high as ever, Atsumu couldn't revel in it longer than he wanted to. From the stands, he had more time to observe just at what specific angle Shouyou bent his knees, how high he jumped, how the ball seemed to flatten with an atomic sound with the force of Shouyou's strength when it hit the opposite court. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled his name, Natsu matching him for every decibel. Shouyou spiked the last ball straight, securing their fourth set, and it was all Atsumu could do not to beam with pride, to jump over the railing to grab the microphone from the commentators' box and announced to every spectator watching here and at home, over the Atlantic and on a different time zone: _that man, Ninja Shouyou, that's my damn baby._

There was so much more information, too. On court, he was always looking ahead, but there were so much intricacies at work behind him: the way Yaku and Komori differed (Yaku always veered a little to the left, faster and trickier, where Komori was steady, stronger with a dig), Sakusa and Shouyou's little telepathy, how Aran stepped forward to cover Ushijima so the latter wouldn't have to break his formation to spike. And at the last set, when Kageyama shocked the audience with his own spin of the hybrid serve and stole five points right under Argentina’s nose (so _fuckin’_ cool, Atsumu thought, biting down on a tiny shred of jealousy), he saw the areas of improvement within his own serve. _It's in the steps,_ Atsumu thought, seeing now where he went wrong. It should burn him that Kageyama yet again was the one who got it right, but his veins instead thrummed with impatience. His fingers itched on his knees. He wanted to play again. He wanted to set for Shouyou again. Would he still have the chance?

It all came to a head when Oikawa took the court, avenging his team immediately with seven service aces. He didn’t realize he’d been clenching his butt until the scoreboard finalized Argentina as the winner, and only then his body voluntarily relaxed, exhilarated just from watching the game. He didn’t even mind how sore his throat was after so much yelling. He felt—oddly inspired, unable to wait for his leg to heal completely so he could try out all the insane plays he’d seen today, made them all better and his. He recognized that a huge portion of it was the positive energy emanating from his teammates; if they acted a little less cheerful, perhaps he’d feel more remorseful about the results of the game (who was it that said second place was just the first loser?), but not a single person on court held their head down, buoyed by the knowledge that in some way, each of them had made history. Atsumu missed that feeling, so satisfied with how well he played that the outcome, win or lose, was simply a bonus. 

On the court, the players were shaking hands, a flurry of blue and red. There was not a single dry eye that wasn’t paired with a happy smile. He watched Shouyou embrace Oikawa again, then Kageyama. His love always belonged first and foremost to volleyball. This was a fact that Atsumu had long recognized, but only now accepted. _Just one more chance,_ he thought to himself, hands balling into a fist, _just one more chance to set for him, and if he wants to leave me after, I won’t complain._

“Atsumu-san.”

He turned to Keiji, half-risen from his seat. Somewhere in the second set, he’d decided to put on a ridiculous bandanna adorned with a pouty owl at the end of each antenna. He’d explained that this was a custom-made Bokuto merchandise with the straightest face Atsumu had seen on a man. Akaashi Keiji was a mystery the first time Atsumu met him, and he continued to be. 

“What?”

“They’re going to have a thirty-minute grace period before the crowning ceremony,” Keiji said, referring to the Japanese team, “and I’m going to greet Koutarou at the Athletes’ Lounge. Do you want to come with me?”

“Uh,” Atsumu said, suddenly aware of his relationship’s impending doom, and poked Natsu on the shoulder. “Sure. Natsu, you wanna join?” Maybe she could be a buffer, and then Shouyou would have to postpone the break up because he couldn't possibly ruin Atsumu's dreams in front of his young, idealistic sister, right? Then every time Shouyou wanted to pick up the conversation, Atsumu would simply pluck Natsu from wherever she was and place her in front of him like a human shield. Wouldn’t that be swell?

But Natsu shook her head, breaking Atsumu’s heart. This was a common theme in his life now: the Hinatas taking and breaking his heart. “I’m going to go get food,” she explained. “I got so hungry just watching them.”

“Haha, yeah, relatable,” Atsumu said, even though right now he felt like he would throw up anything he tried to put in his mouth. Rather pathetic, if he was being honest. Picking up the pieces of his heart, he attempted to stand. Keiji moved an inch, instinctively urged to help him, but refrained once Atsumu managed to, wobbly as he was. He was not looking forward to conquering the stairs. Keiji offered no more help, but he slowed his walking pace, and despite the shame burning his cheeks, Atsumu appreciated that. 

*

He knew what to expect from the Athletes’ Lounge; he’d been given a tour when the Arena first opened, though back then, the paint on the wall was still drying and the furniture still lay on a heap in the middle of the room. Now in use, the cheers and jeers bled from inside the room to the hallways guarded with serious-faced Olympic officials. When Keiji waved his VVIP pass—held in the hand with the wedding ring, the absolute show-off—they flashed a customer-service smile, and let him through the door, Atsumu trudging behind.

Like the wild Pokémon Atsumu always suspected he was, Bokuto appeared first thing before Keiji, igniting Atsumu’s fight-or-flight instinct. He dove for Keiji, who readily welcomed him in his arms, and then they were lost to the rest of the world. Did Atsumu mention how much he hated happy couples? Because he hated them. So much.

Blessedly, he caught Aran’s eyes in this time of peril. He raised one awkward hand and waved. 

“Atsumu!” he beamed as he reached over, louder than Atsumu would prefer. The volume of his voice caught the room’s attention, and now with a spotlight on him, Atsumu tried not to cringe as he returned Aran’s one-armed hug. 

Have you ever been the elephant in the room? Because Atsumu had, and he’d never wish it upon his worst enemies. 

He’d been worrying so much about the prospect of being dumped by Shouyou that he forgot to consider how he would feel about seeing his teammates like this, at his weakest. He swallowed back against the feeling of inadequacy rising to his throat, smiling though it came off more like a wince. Whatever. If anyone tried him, he’d deck them with his crutch. Just watch. 

Yaku was the second to greet him—with a clap on his back hard enough to send him falling over, so glad to know at least _he_ didn’t treat him different—followed by Bokuto, apparently freed from his shared world with Akaashi, yapping about the sheet mask selfie that Atsumu posted of him and Keiji. He’d be more interested in what he had to say if he wasn’t also ducking away, hoping Bokuto’s Dorito-chip torso obscured him from a certain tangerine-head’s view. 

By some karmic coincidence, he bumped into Kageyama, and they blinked at each other in terse silence until the younger nodded his head at him, picture perfect politeness. It was a testament of growth that Atsumu answered in kind, congratulating him on his hybrid serve though something in him was desperate to drown himself in gasoline and walk into an open fire. 

“Thank you,” Kageyama said, shuffling between his feet. “I had a friend work on it with me.”

“Oh?” Atsumu said, because something was suspect about the way this _friend_ made the tints of his cheek turn pink, and if there was any truth to any of his fears at all—

“Atsumu-san?”

 _Please_ take his life away.

A hand gently tugged the end of his jacket. Even if he didn’t turn around, he’d know it was Shouyou. He would recognize that touch even in dreams, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth alone.

Kageyama promptly excused himself. The irony was this: Atsumu spent so much time wishing Kageyama would leave his relationship alone, but now that he got what he wanted, he understood why people said to be careful what one wished for. 

“Shouyou-kun!” he exclaimed. None of the limbs in his body, working or otherwise, felt functional. “Hey, silver medal! That ain’t half bad. Congratulations! I’d hug you, but y’know, I gotta use both hands to stand now, so.”

Shouyou after a match was a wonder, his hair half-wet, colors high in his cheeks from exertion. He looked warmer, softer like a broken-in sweater. He looked like comfort. His face betrayed all of that, pained and pinched in the center, and Atsumu couldn’t help but resent the person who put that expression on him. 

(Guess what? It’s him! Exactly!)

“Can we talk?” Shouyou said. The words made the room feel like a vacuum around him, sucking all the air out. Atsumu fought to breathe. 

_If you’re getting dumped, at least the other guy is hot,_ he consoled himself miserably, thinking about Oikawa’s stupid-shiny hair and tan-lines. _Like, there’s no way anyone can win against that. It’s the only way to go, really._

“Of course,” Atsumu said cheerily, like he didn’t just agree to willingly walk into a guillotine.

*

Shouyou led him outside, walking at a pace too benign for someone who was going to break up with him. They slipped out of the lounge without much fuss, everyone else too occupied with goading Iwaizumi into a thigh wrestle, now that he was apparently unbeatable in the arm department. Atsumu prayed there would be videos. If he did end up a single man by the end of this day, that footage would be the only reason he had to get up any more.

A sense of great déjà vu hit him when Shouyou stopped in front of the locker room, holding the door open for Atsumu to walk through. “Here,” Shouyou said, gesturing at the bench. “Sit down.”

He almost declined, just to be difficult. He told himself he sat down because his good leg was starting to cramp, and definitely not because Shouyou’s pleading eyes won him over. Gingerly, he lowered himself on the bench, arranging his crutches parallel to the floor by his feet. “Okay,” Shouyou said, inhaling deep. “Just a sec.”

He started rummaging through the locker behind him. With his back to Atsumu like this, he couldn’t gauge how Shouyou was feeling; he could feel his nerves worsening, and he wrung his hands just so he didn’t give in to his old habits of biting his nails. Why couldn’t Shouyou just be out with it? Why be so wishy-washy about it?

The temperature in this room was rising. It wasn’t just him, right? He unzipped his jacket, bunched it up on his lap. Perhaps the power generation system wasn’t as foolproof as Keiji had said. He should file a complaint. He should--definitely talk first. Shouyou couldn't break up with him if he broke up with him first. 

Shouyou had turned back around, apparently having found whatever it was he was looking for in his locker. Wide-eyed, he pointed at Atsumu's chest. “Is that my jersey?”

Atsumu looked down, noticing as if for the first time the giant number ten on his chest. “Yeah,” he pulled at the collar uncomfortably. “I mean, what was I supposed to do? Wear _my_ jers—”

Whatever he’d been expecting, it was not to have Shouyou surging up between his legs and planting his lips on his. Shouyou cradled—nope, _smushed_ his cheeks between his hands, kissing him within an inch of his life. He gasped, the opening of his mouth pliant to the tease of Shouyou's tongue, and after almost a week of anger, he went breathless with it, chasing him, going pliant and obedient just for his baby. “You,” Shouyou said when he pulled away, “are so bad for my health.”

Atsumu was not used to looking _up_ at Shouyou. In this new angle, his hair looked like a halo. But he was definitely some kind of demon, with the way he kissed. “Am I supposed to find that romantic,” he said, because what was one supposed to say? Wasn't he about to be dumped? Were they going to have stupid hot break up sex? 

“Do you _want_ to find that romantic?” Shouyou asked seriously. “All I care about is what you want right now.”

“Huh,” Atsumu said, brain cells in his head re-aligning. “So I’m not getting dumped?”

Something behind Shouyou’s eyes died a little. Atsumu saw it happen. He looked so, so sad. “You think I’m dumping you?”

His brain cells took its time recalibrating. It was his only excuse for screeching out, "You're not?!" in the most pitiful, accusing tone that had ever come out of his mouth. "But—why—Oikawa—" he stammered. "Kageyama?"

"Oh my god," Shouyou said, so long-suffering that Atsumu almost apologized. But he was the one who decided _not_ to break up, so Atsumu had no sympathy right now. He started to protest when Shouyou grabbed his chin and locked his gaze with his, and the words turned to dust in his windpipe. "Miya Atsumu," Shouyou said with all the weight of the five continents, "please believe me when I say that there is no one else for me. I will love only you for the rest of my life."

"Oh," Atsumu said, processing. He tried not to gape. "A terrible decision, really."

"No," Shouyou said heavily, pulling his forehead to his, "my best decision."

Tenderly, his hands left Atsumu's face. Bending at the knees, he settled himself between Atsumu's legs, shy in the way Atsumu had never seen him be. Before his mind could descend to the gutter, he reached around his back, and pulled out a tiny red velvet box. He presented it to Atsumu with a flourish and a red-faced grin, like he wasn't breaking and unbreaking his brain in record's speed. Atsumu wanted to cry but also punch himself in the face. He was so, very confused.

And then Shouyou opened the box. Terrifyingly, Atsumu saw, nestled in the soft cushion, gleaming under the fluorescent lights, a simple little gold ring. 

"Atsumu," Shouyou called his name softly, "I was going to propose."

There was too much evidence suggesting the contrary in his head. His head spun, the world shifted off its axis. The locker doors were the color of the floor and the floor was bleeding red. He couldn’t believe this was his life. "Shouyou," it took all of him to say the name of the love of his life, "hold on, fuck, I need—I need a moment."

Shouyou laughed—how could he laugh at this moment? What's so funny, the fact that Atsumu was getting choked up from the emotional whiplash?—wetly, nodding to himself. He was still kneeling. Atsumu wanted to die. "Okay, okay," he said, like he was trying to convince himself too, "take as much time as you need, baby. I'll be here."

“But,” Atsumu said, his face barely peeking from the cover of his hands, “ _was_ here being the operative word, right? You _were_ going to propose, and now you aren’t?”

Reverent, gentle hands pried his hands off his face, revealing his reddened cheeks like petals blooming. Atsumu squeezed his eyes shut because he wasn’t supposed to look directly at the sun. He felt the pads of Shouyou’s fingers on his eyebrows, his eyelids, the high points of his cheekbones, and he exhaled against the touch, trembling. His heart was filled to the brim. He was going to burst into ruins, and Shouyou was going to have to tape him back together. These hands that had delivered spike after powerful spike, that could very well break him, were the most tender things Atsumu had ever known in his life. 

“How can I call you my husband,” Shouyou murmured, “if you don’t believe that I love you best?”

Atsumu braced himself. He opened one eye. Shouyou’s own were soulful, searching. Had they always looked this loving? Had Atsumu missed it, all this time? Simply did not give himself the permission to, like Hades told Orpheous not to look? He had no answers to offer Shouyou; secretly, he’d always believed so. That he’d always love Shouyou more than he loved him. But he didn’t want to break Shouyou’s heart by admitting this, so he told Shouyou, “But I’m so fuckin’ ready to give you all of my heart. I’ve _been_ ready. Ask me now.” He knocked the tips of their noses together. “Ask me now.”

Shouyou exhaled, vulnerable, hot over his lips. “That’s the thing, Atsumu. I don’t want _you_ to give me your heart.” His panic resurfaced, but Shouyou was quick to put an end to it with a soft kiss to the edge of his mouth, “No, no, baby, it doesn’t mean I don’t want your love, okay? Of course I want your love. I want it so bad I can’t sleep at night. But wouldn’t it be so good if we get to keep both of our hearts? Love isn’t an exchange. I don’t want you to see it as that. I’m not some wall you have to climb over.” No mud on the wall. No wall at all. “Love is a union, baby. It’s me and you coming together. We don’t have to lose any part of ourselves to be together.”

“But you can never lose volleyball,” Atsumu said, the words tumbling out of his mouth not unkindly after holding on to them for so long. 

Shouyou smiled. “Maybe not. I know I’m not planning to any time soon. But if you, sweetheart, decide to leave volleyball tomorrow—heck, if you decide right now that volleyball’s no longer fun and you don’t want it in your life anymore—I wouldn’t mind. Because my love for you goes beyond that, okay?” he said. “It’s bigger than anything I’ve ever loved before in my life.”

“You don’t mean that,” Atsumu said. _Bigger than anything else? Bigger than your passion?_

“I’m gonna say it as many times as it takes you to believe in it,” Shouyou said with a fire behind his eyes that Atsumu recognized; it was the same one that burned in him when he made the promise to set for Shouyou, all those years ago. 

“I’m gonna make you say it every day.”

“And I’m going to.”

“Every morning, before you go to meditate. You're gonna be sick of telling me you love me.”

“Never. Before bed, when you’re asleep, while you’re brushing your teeth, interrupting your big movie speeches—I’m gonna tell you every chance that I get, because I know you need to hear things out loud, sometimes.” Shouyou took a deep breath. “What else do you need, baby?”

Atsumu’s laugh was shaky. “I need—” God, where to begin? Should he tell Shouyou about the first time he cried in public? When he was seven years old and his mother said if he behaved really, really good, passed all his quizzes and fought with Osamu less, she’d buy him the Gundam toy he wanted, but when she was about to pay, he caught sight of the price tag and started to cry, right then in front of the shop owner? “I need—so much, Shouyou. I don’t know how to need less.” In a quieter voice, "I don't know how to receive it either."

“Maybe you don’t need to be less,” Shouyou said, pushed himself a little bit farther away so he could grip Atsumu by the shoulders. “Maybe I can give you everything you need. Maybe I won’t be able to. But I wouldn’t know if you didn't talk to me. So from now on, we’re going to _talk_ about everything, okay?” his hands had moved to his knees, stopping them from bouncing. Atsumu nodded weakly, feeling like a hole had been punched through him and Shouyou was filling it with more feelings than he could name. “Before we take the next step, I want us to be right. We’re going to function this time. No more assumptions.”

“No assumptions,” Atsumu echoed, even though the prospect of sitting in front of Shouyou and vomiting every single feeling he had in his head was enough to make him want to run and hide. He braved himself one look at his sun. “Okay.”

And Shouyou met his lips like he couldn’t bear to be apart for another second. The kiss felt different this time, like they were no longer taking hungrily from one another what they could give, but coming together, like all rivers to the ocean. Atsumu was horrified to taste salt on his tongue when they broke off, Shouyou chuckling under his breath, wiping the tears from his eyes. He was so lame. 

“Don’t cry,” Shouyou whispered.

“Well, you gotta stop with the habit of making _me_ cry,” Atsumu sniffed, swiping his hands across his nose. “It’s all your fault, Shouyou-kun.”

Shouyou reached for his hands, tangled them loving between his own. He kissed each knuckle with his eyes closed, and Atsumu was going to cry _again._ “I’m sorry,” Shouyou said. “I’ll make you happy from now on.”

Atsumu bit his lip. “Me too,” he mumbled. “I’m—sorry. For not being forthcoming.”

“I shouldn’t have let you hold everything in,” Shouyou leaned against his knee, mouth brushing against the blue of Atsumu’s jeans. He unclasped the velvet box, momentarily forgotten on the empty space on the bench. His eyes were asking for permission; Atsumu allowed it. His hands shook when he slid the ring on Atsumu, cool on his overheated skin. He felt like he’d just finished a five-set game. Shouyou kissed the diamond on the ring, looked up at him with something raw in his eyes. “Better this time around, okay?” 

Atsumu carded his free fingers through Shouyou’s hair. No mud on the wall. No wall at all. “Okay.”

*

“Shouyou-kun, I thought this isn’t a proposal.”

“It isn’t.”

“Why’d you put the ring on me, then?”

“You’re telling me now that you’ve been made aware of the existence of this ring, you wouldn’t stop at nothing to make me put in on you?”

“... well, good, ‘cause it needs more work. I mean, the locker room, Shouyou? Be a bit more grand with your gestures, c’mon. At least bring a candlelight.”

“My initial plan is actually to give you my gold medal.”

“You got a silver, though.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s still next time, I guess.”

“Next Olympics?”

“Yeah.”

“... you know that with or without the medal, I still would’ve proposed to you, right?”

“Who’s saying anything about _you_ proposing?”

“Are we going to make a competition out of this?”

A grin, a kiss. A lifetime promise. “How else do you keep it fun?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -time for a question for the viewers at home! how did kageyama manage to crack the mystery of atsumu's gmat problem? which 'friend' was kageyama referring to, when talking to atsumu post-game? the answers are one of the following! a) kunimi akira b) kunimi akira c) kunimi akira  
> -if you feel like atsumu is too whitewashed, it's my fault. feel free to call me out on it. but carrot's [roman holiday AU](https://twitter.com/carrotsprout_/status/1301380344315166720?s=20) more or less inspired that part.  
> -in case anyone cares, here's the [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/615CYP6DxiT9GaSnXzXIXi?si=S2o7LXMQSZqyLjmg4szM7g) that i listen to while writing/editing. yes it's 30% indonesian songs, but it's the vibes that do me. if anyone asks i'd gladly explain my brainrot process while choosing the songs. but the biggest influences are: kendrick lamar's 'love,' niki's 'lose', and kunto aji's 'topik semalam'.  
> -after re-reading have my sympathy, i realized how big the influence of red, white, and royal blue was to how i wrote. in this fic, i'd like to thank madeline miller for writing the song of achilles. you know which line i appropriated.  
> -the tokyo apartment is in a complex near [harumibashi park](http://www.tptc.co.jp/en/c_park/02_02), which is indeed a former shipyard.  
> -[snow monsters in miyagi](https://www.japan.travel/en/spot/418/)  
> -if you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading! all your comments are very nice and make me feel warm in my grind to get out of unemployment. if you find any lasting errors or mistakes, that's entirely my fault. i wrote this in between writing motivation letters and GMAT/psychometric tests. please help retweet on [twitter](https://twitter.com/tinysriasih/status/1304324968952377344?s=19), and i will see you guys next time :D

**Author's Note:**

> a cut scene:
> 
> Later, when Atsumu had posted their face-mask selfies on Instagram and satisfyingly ignored Bokuto’s distraught pleading face emojis in his comments, they settled on the loveseat and watched as the coin toss began. His one leg was propped up on the table, and Akaashi had both of his up on the cushion. He realized it probably was a bad call to wear face masks; in a minute, they’d sure get heated, and it wouldn’t bode well with them to scream when the sheet masks started to dry like paper on their cheeks. 
> 
> He also realized another thing, arguably more devastating: he had a new friend now, and he wasn’t someone he played volleyball with. The feelings it incited in him were big and warm, and he desperately needed to get them out of him.
> 
> “Hey, so, Bokuto’s dick, huh?” he said. 
> 
> Akaashi didn’t miss a beat. “You know, Atsumu, if you wanted a taste, you could’ve just said.”
> 
> Atsumu choked. 
> 
> Completely nonchalant, Akaashi reached for the remote to turn up the volume and said, like he didn’t just beat Atsumu in his own game. “I don’t mind sharing.”


End file.
